Casino Won T Pay Out
- Casino Wont Pay Without Tax
- What Happens If A Casino Can't Pay You
- Casino Won T Pay Out Taxes
- Casino Won't Pay Out
NEWCASTLE, Okla. (KOKH) - An Oklahoma woman gambling at the Newcastle Casino Friday morning claims she hit the jackpot for nearly $8.5 million, but she said the casino won’t pay her. Usually, there is a legitimate reason for them not paying out. But sometimes a big winner thought they nailed a major jackpot but didn’t. Before we get to those stories, let’s take a closer look at the reasons why a casino may not pay you your winnings. Reasons Why The Casino Won’t Pay You.
In our last blog, we gave some safety tips on how to stay safe while playing in an online casino. But what if you made a mistake and ended playing in an unscrupulous casino website and win some cash. Here comes the problem, you try to withdraw your winnings using the payment method, but the casino refuses to pay. You tried to contact their customer service but they won’t help you. Worse, they closed and banned your casino account. What are you going to do in this really bad situation? The more important question pops up: Is there a chance of getting your winnings?
Sadly, we can’t say for sure that you will be able to withdraw your winnings. It depends on your situation and the type of operator you’re dealing with. If the online casino doesn’t care about their reputation, things will be a bit harder for you.
The good news, there are steps you can take to claim your winnings. Here’s how to deal with casinos that are not paying out.
Record your activity
Because of the almost anonymous nature of online casinos, I have a habit of taking a screenshot of my activity before and while playing games. I take a screenshot of my balance, account, transaction history, and sometimes my winning moments. I do this for the security of my finance. Well, sometimes I do this to brag my winnings to my friends.
Kidding aside, I suggest you do the same. The pictures you have taken will be helpful when something bad came up, like when an online casino refuses to pay. This can be and evidence that will help you win your case.
Get in touch with the customer service
If anything goes wrong while playing in an online casino, contact first the customer service team and try to resolve the problem. Chances are they have glitches in their system or there is a miscommunication on both sides.
Whether or not the customer service can provide a concrete solution to your problem, it is always a wise decision to let the customer service know. Follow their instructions. If you manage to get your winnings in the casino, then it’s a good day. If not, you may need some professional guidance.
Don’t forget to take a screenshot of your conversation. It will be helpful if things became more serious.
Use casino portal to voice out your situation
Nowadays, there is plenty of prominent casino portal that can help players’ issue in online casinos. A casino site like askgambler can call out casino website to resolve the issue. When a casino website has too many unresolved issues, they will be blacklisted and could affect their reputation online.
Hopefully, the casino portal will able to help you get your winnings in an online casino. If the casino won’t respond, you may need to take further legal action. This will lead us to your next step.
Contact the Casino’s regulator
If the casino has a license to operate from a certain gambling commission, contacting them may be your best shot to get your winnings. Some examples of these regulators you might encounter include the UK Gambling Commission, Malta Gaming Authority, and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.
Casino Wont Pay Without Tax
A regulated casino always displays its regulators’ seal at the website footer. You can click this logo to link you to the operator’s license validation. Here, you’ll know the operator’s email, license number, other more information.
Try contacting the casino regulator through email. Explain your situation and present your screenshots as your proof. Hopefully, the regulator will take action on your complaints.
There is no guarantee that you will get your winnings with the help of casino regulators. Some regulators may not meddle on the payout issue because it doesn’t breach operator license. However, never skip this step and let them know your situation. Furthermore, there is a possibility that the casino will not able to renew their license once the regulator receives this kind of issue.
Hire a lawyer
If contacting the gambling commission still doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to seek legal action. I hope you won’t able to reach this step because everything will be a bit expensive starting at this point.
You need to hire a lawyer to help you. Not an ordinary lawyer, I’m afraid you the ones who specialized in international law. Consult everything to your lawyer including some documents that you have. Consult your case to your lawyer and decide whether or not you should take legal action against the online casino.
Online casino not paying out: reasons behind
The 5-step mentioned above will help players claim their winnings. But before you make casino complaints, make sure that you didn’t violate any rules that casino has. Read below the possible reasons why a casino won’t pay:
Breach of terms and condition
As mentioned, the online casino has a set of regulations that players must agree to follow in order to use their services. You can find these regulations at Terms and conditions. If you violated one of these regulations, the casino has the right to suspend and forfeit your winnings. Read the terms and conditions before you create a casino account to save yourself from trouble.
Violate bonus terms
I understand that huge bonuses can make you excited, but please understand the bonus terms before you play any games. Pay attention to bonus’ wagering requirement, max bet required specific games where you can use the bonus. While the bonus is an effective way to boost your finance in an online casino, it can also be the reason why you can’t withdraw your winnings if it is not used in the right way.
What Happens If A Casino Can't Pay You
Withdrawal limits
The withdrawal limit is the amount required by the casino that you need to reach before you can make any withdrawal transaction. You can find this information at the casino’s “about us” or at the or at ‘frequently asked questions” page.
The amount of maximum and minimum amount you can cash out differs from one casino to another. In order to have a successful withdrawal transaction, you have to make sure that the amount you have requested is in between the limits.
Problems with identity verification
Before players can withdraw any amount, the casino always verifies the player’s identities. They need to ensure that you who you say you are. The casino is doing this to protect your money in the online casino against hackers.
Before you can withdraw any amount from an online casino, you might be asked to provide some documents to verify your account. These may include valid IDs such as passport or driving license, utility bills and a photo of the card you used during your deposit transaction.
It’s often been said that casinos want you to win. At some level, that sounds like an oxymoron because why would casinos, who make money from your betting, want to turn around and pay you that money back? For one reason, the odds are always stacked against you. Even when they’re paying you money, the casinos are still keeping a lot of it.
Secondly, when there’s a big winner, it generates excitement. Pictures get taken. Stories get told. Ads get printed. Another round of gamblers want to visit the casino with renewed dreams of coming home with a lot of money.
Still, even though casinos want to pay you, there are times when they either can’t or don’t pay. Sometimes, there are perfectly good reasons why casinos refuse to pay out on slot machine wins, but there have been a (thankfully small) number of cases in which people thought they earned big only to find out they didn’t.
Good Reasons Why Casinos Don’t Pay
Even if you were to win a significant amount of money at the casino, there are a few very good reasons why the casino might not hand over your winnings and both would be your fault (that’s why they’re good reasons).
No Identification
The first is if you forget your ID. The casino has to run an ID check on you (for a number of reasons, not the least of which is money laundering) and if you don’t have a valid ID, they can’t run the check. Therefore, you don’t get paid. When this happens, the casino will write you an unclaimed jackpot slip and you usually have 90 days to claim your winnings.
The Gambling Intercept Payment System
Casino Won T Pay Out Taxes
The second reason the casino might not pay is if your name comes up in the Gambling Intercept Payment (GIP) System. The GIP System is a database of people who owe child support, have monetary judgements against them, etc. If you owe money, the state will get your winnings and use it to pay what you owe. It’s kind of a bummer, but ultimately understandable.
The Machines Can Malfunction
There’s a third reason that casinos might not pay and it’s anything but a good reason for them to do so. Sometimes, a slot machine will malfunction and inform someone they won hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) when in fact they won a few dollars or none at all.
Sadly, there are warnings on the machines themselves and the legal system backs this up. If the machine malfunctions, the casino does not have to pay the winnings. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it can feel like the casinos are “stealing” a lot of money when really, the law is on the their side.
Casino Won't Pay Out
It doesn’t help the situation that the casinos are responsible for the operation of the slot machines, and they’re also the beneficiary when they break. I’ll talk about what to do when this happens in a moment, but spoiler alert—you won’t like it very much.
The Case of Katrina Bookman
Just to show the types of error that a casino can make for which they won’t pay, we’ll start with the case of Katrina Bookman. According to CNN, Ms. Bookman was playing at the Resorts World Casino in Queens, New York, when she apparently won almost $43 million on a slot machine.
Her winning is verified by a selfie she took next to a machine which is shown to be printing a cash ticket in the amount of $42,949,672.76. However, when she tried to cash in on her winnings, she was instead offered a complimentary steak dinner and $2.25. Of course, $2.25 is slightly less than $43 million.
The casino refused to pay because they claim the Sphinx Slot Machine at which Bookman played malfunctioned. This claim was verified by the New York State Gaming Commission, which basically entitles Bookman to absolutely nothing—the casino didn’t even have to offer the steak or the pocket change.
This incident feels grossly unfair, especially as Bookman’s lawyer, Alan Ripka questions a system in which the casino both operates and maintains the slot machines and gets to say when they are broken. He is trying to argue for either the casino’s negligence contributing to the malfunction (in which case Bookman should receive the money) or an outright conspiracy to prevent payment.
Given the case law against him, there seems little chance Ripka will win the settlement he and Bookman desire.
The Case of Veronica Castillo
Fox News tells a similar tale. This time, a woman from Oregon named Veronica Castillo went to the Lucky Eagle Casino in Rochester, Washington. While playing slots with her mother, Castillo said that a slot machine said that she was the winner of $8 million. In response, workers at the casino allegedly shut off the machine and offered her $80, less than her deposit of $100.
As in the case of Bookman, the casino claimed that the $8 million “prize” was due to a malfunction and that the maximum payout of $20,000 is posted on the machine. Fox News legal analyst Bob Massi has joined Castillo in voicing his concern over this incident, asking that someone needs to be held accountable for such a grievous error.
Castillo goes farther claiming that the casino’s policy is “deceiving…[it] might even be fraudulent.” Like Bookman, Castillo has explored legal options, though the fact that the error was attributed to slot machine error means that Castillo is likely to collect no damages including getting her $20 back. However, in her case, there are reports Castillo was offered a smaller sum around $30,000.
This is still less than her original winnings, but more than the casino is likely to pay.
Your Options If It Happens to You
The truly unfortunate part of this is that, when a casino decides not to pay, there is not a whole lot you can do about it. I stand by my earlier claim that casinos don’t mind to pay winners, but that doesn’t mean they want to pay them big money. Also, casinos know the law. If they’re not paying, more than likely, the law is on their side.
Therefore, if you find yourself holding a cash ticket or a selfie that says you are owed a lot of money and the casino says no, don’t expect much to happen. Yes, you can cause a scene. Yes, you can retain council. However, the casinos will have already laid down a good defense by posting notices of when they do and don’t pay.
Even worse, in the world of software, bugs happen. As long as the bugs didn’t happen through negligence, it will be hard for a lawyer to win a case for damages.
Still, I am not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be one. Please seek professional advice if this ever happens to you. However, I will suggest that you keep your head when it happens, but record as much as you can. Fortunately, you have a cell phone you can use to photo or video record your winning ticket, the screen, etc.
Next, strongly consider taking any offer the casino gives you. It’s going to be rough if you end up with a steak instead of $8 million. Also, accepting anything could be seen as you entering into a contract with the casino to receive meat (or whatever) instead of money. Still, the casino has nothing to offer you. You might try to negotiate, but unless case law changes, you have no power.
Conclusion
It’s hard writing on this subject because while I would be silly to argue that casinos are paragons of virtue and generous giving, they’re generally pretty fair. In areas where there are several casinos (and they tend to bunch up), each one wants to do right by their customers or those casinos will watch their customers go elsewhere.
Still, casinos are businesses that are interested in earning and making money. Like all businesses, a casino can’t continue to operate if it just hands out money all willy-nilly. That’s why they know the law, will follow the law, and not pay out millions of dollars when they do not have to. This, sadly, is the cold, hard truth of business.
Ultimately, this type of thing happens very rarely. The amount of control and testing that goes into slot machine software virtually ensures this type of major malfunction is going to happen very infrequently. If it happens on a smaller scale is another matter, but it’s probably more likely a casino pays out a smaller mistake just to avoid the bad PR.
If you find yourself on the losing end of a casino mistake, stay calm and try to work with the casino. Just remember, they hold all of the chips (pun intended) and your best bet is to get something out of the deal. Keeping level-headed and asking for reasonable amounts is your best way to do that.
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