Paradise 8 Casino - 일반 토론 (2 페이지)

May I ask what the "coinbase" is you are referring to, though? I am not sure now. 🤷‍♀️

I wish you all the luck, of course, and please keep us updated.

Note: I am aware of and apologize for the length of this comment. Please take into consideration the scale of the situation. 

I wanted to give an update here in the hopes that I can induce a pair of eyes outside of Michal to appraise the situation, or that I can get Michal to appraise the situation in full. I am aware personnel outside of the official complaints team may have limited power to do anything, but maybe whoever reads this can put this on the radar of someone relevant. Michal, from the limited amount he has engaged the subject, has presented his position as being intractable, so forgive me for not going back to him straight away.

Henceforth, I shall refer to Paradise 8 and sister site ThisIsVegas casino as TIV.

First, a very brief recap of my situation. TIV has confiscated $111,758 of my balance. In addition, I have unequivocally made allegations that they've fabricated scores in the tournaments they ran, a position I have explained at great length and for which I have provided a substantial amount of evidence and documentation for. TIV confiscated my last $31,608 under justification that I had made public complaints against them. Moreso, they allege slander. The details relevant to this situation would be too lengthy to repeat in the space provided. Therefore, I am providing the appropriate link for a proper summary of previous details:

https://www.gamblingforums.com/threads/issues-at-thisisvegas-paradise-8-80-150-revoked.26683/

(If you have a policy against links and retract them, a reference to them should still be on record.)

I do not expect you to read that whole post prior to your next response, but a momentary glance at it I think would be appropriate to get a sense of scale of the complaint that I have rendered against TIV. I had made 3 separate complaints here against TIV, all dismissed by Michal. More on that later.

Prior to issuing my 3rd complaint here, I posted about the situation in detail at Casinomeister: 

https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/serious-issues-at-casino-111-758-of-my-balance-revoked.102103/

Comments from that post against TIV included "That may very well be the worst casino I've ever heard of" and "Vile & disgusting group by the sounds of it". There were no comments in their defense. As for Casinomeister itself, its official public response, aside from "TIV is notorious for ignoring player complaints so we couldn't do much to help him anyway" seems to have been: 

-The site has no license

-They have some of the most predatory terms I've seen - $500/week withdrawal limit at the base tier, free chips taint cash balances, 10x withdrawal caps on modest deposits, $10+ withdrawal fees, balances forfeit after 90 days of inactivity.

-Pages and pages and pages of rules that they can use to take your balance, including one you mention "Should at any time the casino discover an active or past complaint/dispute/criticism on a public forum or blog or any other type of website." (and it doesn't even specify their own site in that clause, so any vaguely negative community feedback counts).

... and shock horror, when you won something, they stole the money. It's not gambling, it's fraud... and you got done up like a kipper. If it's too good to be true...

Your entire argument requires a foundation that the other side is acting with some level of good faith. If they are not - and recall they have no license at all - then their intention was to string you along, get you depositing and playing for prizes they have no intention of honouring.

This response got the licensing part wrong. They were licensed when I played there. It also was a bit reductive, definitely not comprehensive, and, given prior history, likely designed to take a shot or two at me as well. Still, in conjunction with other comments, some through PM, it seems very likely Casinomeister was not buying TIV's positions. 

TIV did not respond to that post. Instead, when I was prosecuting my third complaint against them here at Casino Guru, they directed Michal to a previous post I had made at Casinomeister. This one was against Slotastic casino. At the end of it was an admonishment by senior Casinomeister administrator Max Drayman. Michal quoted at me the following excerpts and stated he would no longer be considering my case:

Yes, well, that appears to be a pattern with your posts: you say something that isn't true -- usually claiming to be the victim of one thing or another -- and when you are corrected with supporting evidence you say "I was not trying to imply blaa blaa blaa".

and 

I suggest that if you avoided the hard-done-by approach and sailed a little closer to the truth in the first place such "misunderstandings" would be a lot less frequent. Also, your time here would be a lot less fraught with the tensions that inevitably result from us having to constantly monitor your posts to counter your false claims and self-serving distortions of the facts.

.....

For context, I have been a high volume, full-time professional gambler for the past 19 years. Predictably, conflicts arose. Over time I accrued 8 formal complaints at Casinomeister. In real time there were no issues with those complaints. However, when Max Drayman eventually took stock of how many complaints I had compiled, there was a stark change in his conduct towards me. He did not like that I exclusively used his site to try to get leverage in complaints and that I would sometimes post at more than one website in an effort to extend that leverage. I made a response in my Slotastic post which he considered overstep, saying essentially that it could be good to be slightly provocative in your posts because it would provoke responses which would increase views which would increase your leverage against a casino if you made a legitimate point. I probably should not have said that. Still, I had taken deep exception to Drayman's comments because I considered them flat out false and the products of reactionary and shallow analysis. I had not lied about anything. The complaints I had been making were substantial, legitimate, and made as a last resort. Moreso, it remains quite unclear what he was even referring to (he still refuses to clarify). Since Max Drayman had closed the thread and would not allow any option to make a public response, I had originally decided to just move on from those comments because they were at the end of a complaint that I was no longer prosecuting.

With those comments now relevant again, I contacted Max Drayman and explained the situation. I asked him to intervene because it was being used to exonerate a casino that I believe he felt was guilty. He stalled for a while saying he was "thinking about it". Eventually he took the position that he would do nothing because "I wouldn't appreciate CasinoGuru telling us how to do our business, so I am not about to tell them how to do theirs." I reminded him there were plenty of things he could say that would not undercut CasinoGuru, and that I should get a chance to respond to his attacks, and that he had edited out some of the most basic and otherwise unrelated facts of my TIV posting for no other reason than that I had mentioned that AskGamblers had "punted me off" (the only wording I regret) to a licensing board, which he took as an attack against them. I got nothing more than a "No."  

As for the next step, I want to emphasize that this was absolutely a last resort and that I did everything I could to find a more amenable solution, but I ultimately told Casinomeister that if they did not remove their comments, I was going to file libel charges to have them removed by force. After all, I was not going to get stiffed for $111,000, have the casino exonerated, and get slandered a liar on top of it. I had emailed them several times with very thorough rebuttals of the accusations they made against me, and I offered very generous terms of retraction to make it visible only to the relevant parties. My account was immediately banned without notice. Max Drayman and former owner Bryan Bailey refused to engage in a dialogue other than to say that Casinomeister was fully insulated because my account was "anonymous", that they would not remove the comments unless directed to do so by one of their lawyers, and to make some occasional insults. I considered this response to be in bad faith. For starters, their "anonymous account" defense was simply not true, and I suspected they knew this and were just using it as a deterrent. My identity would have been contextually obvious to all relevant parties. A simple reading of the laws of the relevant jurisdiction allowed only a few provisions for immunity, none of which applied to Casinomeister. Further, the argument wasn't true at a common-sense level, and none of the lawyers who read into the case backed this notion, including Casinomeister's own. 

In response to my Cease & Desist letter, after stalling for several weeks after the initial deadline stated by my lawyer, Casinomeister said nothing more than that they had done an "investigation" which had "revealed" that I had made 8 complaints, that I was guilty of multiple (unspecified) forum violations, and that they would not cooperate. In other words, they felt they had no motivation to engage until I showed them that I was willing to incur the costs of formal litigation and prove that such a letter was not a bluff tactic. 

I pushed to move forward with litigation, but my lawyer decided to drop me as a customer. No reason was ever provided. I suspect I wasn't a docile enough client for him, or that he did not want to take on a media conglomerate like Gentoo Media, or that he did not really feel competent for such a case and thought he could just make some easy money on a Cease & Desist letter. 

....

I have not been able to find another lawyer. Casinomeister had been a German company but had recently been bought up by Gentoo Media. This changed the jurisdiction to Malta. I had been preparing to try to move forward through the German legal system and did not learn about the recent acquisition until a few months later. This stalled things quite a lot. Malta is both a very small legal jurisdiction and one that caters to a some very niche subjects. I can not tell you how frustrating it was trying to find a lawyer that was responsive. The facts of the case have proven to be mostly immaterial. Most lawyers made no initial response to my emails or did not handle libel cases or were on extended vacation or would suggest an online consultation and then permanently ghost me the moment I mentioned my primary computer had an external monitor with no camera and that I would prefer to converse by email. I had one lawyer exchange several emails, cite some initial fees (which I was willing to pay) and then just inexplicably disappear off the face of the earth communication wise except for one or two short, discombobulated responses. The lawyer I managed to get for the Cease & Desist had startlingly absent communication. Everything operated on the most plodding of time frames. In short, I have not been able to find a lawyer with any follow through and have gotten frustrated. I wanted to win not just for my own sake, but so as not to reinforce to Casinomeister that they can just dominate their users with impunity if they wanted to. I also wanted to submit some signed affidavits on the subject. Instead, I suspect Casinomeister now views me as something of a rando flailing about with empty threats. All the same, I have decided it would be more efficient to try again communicating with you, Casino Guru, in spite of it all with the intention of resuming the search for a lawyer only if absolutely necessary.

Bottom line, since I first concluded TIV was fabricating tournament scores in January of 2023, I have been trying to navigate the situation of getting my money from them for about 32 months now. You have no idea how frustrating it is to go over the same arguments in your head at great detail over and over again and to take such meticulous care in your presentation only to get negative results for all your efforts, all from minimally invested and minimally probing counterparties. I would not mind it if Casino Guru did not want to spend the time to properly evaluate the case. That would be understandable. In response to Michal, yes, I am very aware that your complaint handling is a free service. What bothers me is that he is making a verdict without mastering all of the content. In such a situation, he shouldn't be making a verdict at all. At least AskGamblers had enough sense to extricate themselves from a situation they didn't want to deal with by redirecting me to an unspecified licensing board, even though they likely knew such a thing had no viable chance of accomplishing anything. TIV kicked up a lot of dust. I have had to deal with vague aspersions where I am forced to guess where they are coming from. Michal should expect some long responses, especially given the amount of money involved.

My biggest regret handling the situation is that I mentioned nothing of fabricated tournament scores in the handling of my initial complaint here at Casino Guru (other than the eventual mention of a "B" section which I had not started). My reason for this was simple. Even if I could convince Casino Guru TIV was fabricating tournament scores, that is not the thing TIV's reputation could ever come back from. Thus, knowing they were the kind of casino that would do such a thing to begin with, it would make more sense for them just to stiff me if such an accusation ever stuck because there would be little marginal damage to their reputation for doing so. Instead, I felt it would make more sense just to complain that they had stopped making payments because such a thing could resume without notice. I didn't think I could lose that complaint. In retrospect, I should have made private communications in advance with an emphasis on discretion to get my arguments across so that Michal would understand everything afterwards in proper context. What I got instead was a complaint specialist who was suspicious when I did present my case on the subject and who chose to ignore it. Officially his position was "Despite his detailed account and readiness to provide documentation, we had to close the complaint due to it being a resubmission of a previously rejected issue, as our system did not allow multiple complaints for the same case." I am not here to attack the integrity of your site, but it needs to be said that this explanation is nonsense. Further, Michal has gotten his conclusion wrong on my first complaint.

....

Further, Michal has gotten his conclusion wrong on my first complaint. I suspect TIV has showed him one or two things (things I am confident I could explain were I afforded an opportunity) and he has closed himself off. He has accused me of slander and hasn't specified what that slander is.

If TIV actually believes I am slandering them, my response is that they should file libel charges against me. Frankly, I would welcome it. They would lose and it would validate my position. I firmly believe that.

Hello, I understand that this is regarding a complaint that is one year old. I believe it would be beneficial to include it here so that everyone can read both your posts and the complaint.

https://casino.guru/complaints/paradise-8-casino-player-s-account-was-frozen-and

The ending:

"Dear mcd6802,

First of all, you once again responded with quite extensive text where you "touched" multiple points. After reading it through and "removing" all your personal feelings and assumptions the bottom line is (As far as I understand it correctly) you have continued to complain about your This Is Vegas case on various forums and webpages and once the casino team has enough and warned you that if you do not stop "slander" and "falsely accuse them" they will go ahead and engage using clause 11.10 as they have clearly informed you about.

Our patience has worn thin, and we now request that the customer promptly remove absolutely all posts containing unfounded suspicions and "hunches" that are tarnishing our reputation with baseless claims. Failure to comply will result in the escalation of this matter in accordance with Clause 11.10 of our terms and conditions, addressing the misuse of accounts. Potential consequences include account termination, winnings confiscation, and denial of services.

We appreciate your attention to this matter.

Best regards

And now you have submitted yet another complaint that the casino team has frozen off the $31,608 and is not processing further withdrawals? I wonder, why are you surprised?

I have checked ( I confess I have not read all the comments and posts as there are many) the forums and webpages you have shared the links and basically no one has sided with you, which makes me wonder again where the issue might really be.

I will not comment on the last part of your previous post as I don't think it is worth it. You will still see only your point no matter the explanation.

One thing I will point out is that you have freely come to our complaint forum and you have submitted your complaint.

We at Casino Guru are trying to help players by resolving issues between the players and the casinos if possible, and we are offering this service free of charge. Casino.guru is an independent source of information about online casinos, online casino games and acts as a mediator in resolving players’ disputes that is not controlled by any gambling operator.

So although we were trying to help you, our decision to reject your complaint was after gathering the information from both sides and we have provided sufficient explanation for our decision

For anyone interested to know more here is the first complaint: https://casinoguru-en.com/this-is-vegas-casino-player-faces-lengthy-delay-in

With all this being said, I can acknowledge that the casino's current action may not be the ideal approach, and our advice to casinos is to use rules like this in really last resort options, but given the circumstances leading to this decision, I can empathize with the casino team after your various accusations triggered them not to continue to pay the remaining funds.

And yes, I will use the Casinomeister's head of complaints point as they have nicely summed up what appears to be your modus operandi:

Yes, well, that appears to be a pattern with your posts: you say something that isn't true -- usually claiming to be the victim of one thing or another -- and when you are corrected with supporting evidence you say "I was not trying to imply blaa blaa blaa".

I suggest that if you avoided the hard-done-by approach and sailed a little closer to the truth in the first place such "misunderstandings" would be a lot less frequent. Also, your time here would be a lot less fraught with the tensions that inevitably result from us having to constantly monitor your posts to counter your false claims and self-serving distortions of the facts.

When we declined your previous case involving This is Vegas Casino, the casino possessed a valid Curaçao/Antillephone license. However, it appears that this situation has changed. According to our investigation, neither This is Vegas nor Paradise 8 Casino currently hold a valid license. Consequently, there is no gaming authority to which you can escalate your complaint further. However, even if you did, it's important to note that we cannot dispute the fact that the casino was merely adhering to its established rules.

Unfortunately, after gathering all the necessary information we are forced to reject this complaint. Sorry we were not able to help you with this one, but please, do not hesitate to contact us in the future, if you run into any other (not related to this or your previous case) issues with this or any other casino and we will try our best to help.

Best Regards,

Michal

Casino Guru"



I believe it is not necessary to add my own opinion to this.

Can you confirm how much you personally have read? I am well aware of Michal comments and have already provided extensive counterpoint to what he wrote here. If I bothered to frame everything point by point in response to his assertions from this passage, would you give it consideration? Michal is the outlier in all of this. He is the only one backing TIV.

"I believe it is not necessary to add my own opinion to this."

Yes, I am aware you said that. I am beseeching you as a supplicant bent fully at the knee. I acknowledged Michal's rulings almost immediately in my most recent posting. I posted with an expectation that you would be aware of what Michal ruled as a starting point for a dialogue, not the end of it. You are deferring to the proverbial authority that is supposed to know. I do not believe that would appropriate here because Michal's is the minority opinion among other authorities who have reviewed the subject, albeit the most consequential. I do understand maintaining solidarity within the personnel of your site and presenting a unified front. I understand you may have a motivation not to step out of rank. However, please keep in mind the gravity of the situation. This extends beyond whether I personally get paid. Try to remember that if I am correct, this casino would present a serious safety hazard to other people. That is why I am hoping you will read yourself in to see what conclusions you would reach independently. I believe that sort of mindset would reinforce Casino.guru as a robust site. I spent a lot of time to put my case together, and it takes a lot less time to read than to write.

I'm sorry but I have to make clear that I'm not here to revise the complaint process or outcomes; hence, there is just me and you and our opinions on that. I have no idea what you meant by "I am beseeching you as a supplicant bent fully at the knee." And honestly, I do not believe it carves any significant information that could ever change such an old complaint.

I'm sorry you feel dissatisfied. Stay well.

From your response, I am going to conclude that you read very little of the 15,000+ characters I wrote a week ago. There is a lot of relevant information there and in the content that it references that was not considered by Michal. This has been an ongoing situation over the past year. When I said "I am beseeching you as a supplicant bent fully at the knee" I was simply imploring you to read yourself in properly to make your own conclusions.

To be frank, there are people who would read your framing of things as a roundabout way of doubling down on Michal's aspersions while trying to position yourself as a neutral party. You included only Michal's attacks. You did not mention I was not given a chance to respond. You did not mention, by his own admission, Michal did not read a lot of the content. You included nothing else from the dialogue of that complaint or the previous two complaints. You have not been open to the inevitable appeal that was going to be made. I am incapable of believing you are powerless to act if you wanted to. I am hard pressed to believe that Casino Guru staff don't talk to each other off the record.

Again, I am asking for a bit of your time. I can't overstate what I have been through.

Once more: I am not in a position to investigate my colleagues’ decisions regarding the complaint process. Please respect that. I have been trying to explain this to you throughout. You are correct, I am not familiar with the details of all the posts or communications, and I cannot delve deeper because I only see the complaint as you do, without the additional files or emails. Therefore, I cannot be of any further help.

The decision has been made and cannot be changed. Honestly, even without reading every single post, your behavior and contradictions are as clear to me as Michal’s. We cannot support you if you act against your own statements. That is a major part of the issue. Finding a fair solution or determining who acted worse has, in my opinion, been impossible. To be frank, the complaint process has been largely a charade to me.

I have never discussed this case with Michal.

Your case has been given full consideration and is now closed. This forum is not for ongoing debates or repeated appeals regarding this complaint.

Thank you for your understanding.

If you are tempted not to read this at all, then view this post as closing statements....

With all due respect and with assurance I did not want us to be on combative terms, it is easy to make declarations when you are in a position of power where you don't need to substantiate those declarations. You could always delve deeper if you wanted. Decisions can always be changed. Finding a fair solution or determining who has acted "worse" is always possible. As far as my "behavior" or "contradictions" or that "I act against my own statements" or that the complaint process is a "charade", I assume these statements are all vague on purpose. I could only guess what you are referring to, and I am going to make an educated guess that these comments are rooted in you taking TIV's or Michal's attacks as something close to gospel truth. 

I agree with you that talking further with you on this subject is not likely to be productive. From the beginning, you have not been open to what I have said. You have made several comments from which I can infer you do not understand basic components of my complaints. You have very much added your opinion on the matter. Still, I do certainly understand your position of not wanting to do the work that would be required. Forgive me if it looks to me like that has been a guiding force to your response and/or that you have a predisposed tendency to side with a Casino Guru complaints specialist. Forgive me if I do not believe there has been a balance of specificity between the two sides. 

I will be formally reopening my complaint to make the appropriate updates and to make the obvious responses I would have made had I not decided to deal with Casinomeister first. I am going to make an educated guess I will get Michal again and/or that there will be a predisposed mindset applied to that complaint regardless of merit. Michal was very unsubtle that any future appeals would be handled with prejudice. 

In my legal action against Casinomeister on the matter, Casinomeister was aware of all of Michal's comments that you invoked. I can assure you that they chose not to reference them. For your part, Casinomeister's contradictory assessment has remained unmentioned. Frankly, even if I won a retraction under full legal scrutiny, this site is very much giving me the impression such a thing wouldn't carry any weight here anyhow (a comment on that would be appreciated).

I will go on the record that in my 19 years as a full-time professional gambler, in my opinion, TIV / Paradise8 represents the most insidious casino group I have ever dealt with, and that I am pooling from a very large sample size.

On a side note, for a site like Paradise 8 which is one of four essentially identical skins, I think it might be appropriate to try to find a way to consolidate any threads between them.

Thank you for your latest post! It perfectly illustrates why the complaint was rejected in the first place. The more you write, the clearer it becomes that this is not about facts but about endless debating. I won’t be engaging further. After 19 years as a 'full-time professional gambler' it seems the biggest scars come from never being able to accept a decision.

I have no idea how Casinomeister is involved in the Casino Guru case, and based on this whole conversation, I do not care. You are twisting everything into an emotional dispute wrapped in rejection. This completely undermines any theoretically plausible argument you might have.

Stay well.

For someone quoting Casinomeister in your opening post and given they have been mentioned several times, I wouldn't have been so quick to advertise you don't know how they are involved. At least we have reached a mutual agreement to end this conversation.

Alright, I’ll leave it at that.

Just a heads-up for anyone reading: this casino’s safety score is low, so it’s probably smart to steer clear until they sort things out. Don’t take this conversation as a sign everything’s fine there. It is not:

https://casino.guru/paradise-8-casino-review#tab=js-tab-detail-homepage

Sorry, I felt it would be reasonable to add this note.

Thank you and be well!