There is more bad news surfacing in the US poker market as BetOnline Poker, considered one of the softest places to play online poker in recent memory and one of the few US-facing sites remaining, has reached full crisis mode in the minds of many of their poker customers. BetOnline has had a string of problems with their poker client since the creation of their poker room post-Black Friday, with players complaining about numerous issues from false cheating allegations and fund seizures, to missing money in their accounts and extremely slow withdrawal times.

Now players on different forums are reporting that after funding their BetOnline accounts they cannot launch the software or access their cashier page. More troubling was the allegation of one player who posted on the 2+2 poker (a respected member names tooCuriousso1) forum that $4,000 went missing from his online poker account and upon contacting BetOnline discovered something very troubling: “BOL [BetOnline] employees know/have access to player account #’s AND passwords. Some customer service chat representative sitting in BOL’s office knows all my login info. And can login to my account and do whatever they like using a VPN or simply being outside of the country of Panama (where they are located).”

Here is the alleged chat-log posted by TooCuriousso1 with a BetOnline representative:

Wilson: Thank you for contacting BetOnline Live Chat Service. How may I assist you today?

Me: Hi Wilson. I have had a pending cashout since sunday and I was wondering when that would be going through to my moneybookers.

Wilson: can i have your account and password?

Me: bbbbbb

Me: I will never be giving my password out under these circumstances, and to be honest its not cool that it’s asked of me.

Wilson: we already have your passworde

Wilson: its just part of the security procedures

Me: Whats stopping you from using my password to log into my email on file, or when you get off work logging into my account?

Me: I know…thats the ridiculous part.

Wilson: i already know your password

Wilson: i just need to verify

Wilson: for your own security

Me: it starts with xxxxx

Me: or ends*

Wilson: ends

Me: so you cant tell me when my cashout will be processed unless i state my password?

Me: this is what I have an issue with “Whats stopping you from using my password to log into my email on file, or when you get off work logging into my account?”

Wilson: we are located on panama

Wilson: check the rules on betonline

Wilson: there you can see the countries that cannot use betonline

Wilson: panama is on that list

Wilson: that stops me from loggin when i get off work

Wilson: i just cant

Wilson: and we wouldnt either way

Me: nah its pretty simple. you get a VPN. log on. boom.

Wilson: we are here to help you

Wilson: haha ok sir let me check about your pending payout

Me: ill just write an email then.

Another 2+2 poster told a similar story of discovering that BetOnline employees having access to player account numbers and passwords, as well as money missing from his account. There have been a number of these allegations along with slow-paying and account seizures, but as Bill Dozer from SportsBettingReview.com stated in a forum post:

“Poker has been a double edged sword for BetOnline. There were a lot of pure poker players from sites like 2plus2 who needed places to play and Betonline was able to quickly gobble up part of the poker market. But with that comes a lot of responsibility. The more players you have the bigger and more experienced fraud team is needed. Poker audits have taken too long and fraud cases probably aren’t caught at a high enough rate and they aren’t resolved fast. You can be sure a lot of the guys who worked in sports aren’t thrilled by the curve ball poker throws at them. Im sure if we were rating poker rooms they wouldn’t match the feedback of BetOnline’s book.

“I know its frustrating for players caught up in an audit and especially when there aren’t a lot of places to turn for poker help. Many have gotten angry over the years when Sportsbook Review doesn’t rate a book on their poker or their casino games etc.

“That said we do try to help them with poker related CS. There have been a higher rate of complaints on account hacking however everyone who has talked to us about it has had their money returned. From the beginning and going back about 6 years, we don’t have a claim where a player has been cheated or has not received all of his funds. If you have a complaint, we will be happy to look at it.”

We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops, but at this time we suggest players recognize the risk at BetOnline, and only leave enough funds in their accounts to play their usual games, or an amount that they can comfortably lose if things continue to go sour.

Here are some of the threads regarding BetOnline.com:

• ·         BetOnline Poker is ROGUE
• ·         BetOnline Poker Issues
• ·         BetOnline Employees Know Your Player Passwords
• ·         BETONLINE SCAM: employees know player passwords, players hacked, unpaid, etc.
• ·         BetOnline: Fraud Allegations Surface

Tags: Accusations, Allegation, Betonline, Black Friday, Cashier, Cashout, Chat Log, Chat Service, Country Of Panama, Crisis Mode, Member Names, Missing Money, Moneybookers, Online Poker, Poker Client, Poker Room, Representative Wilson, Security Procedures, Seizures, Withdrawal Times

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2012 at 8:35 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.