Mount Gold - Responsible gaming

Hi kotten45 - welcome back!

Please ensure you have read our Complaint Guidance to ensure that you fully understand how our complaint management process functions.

As we are the ADR for the Infiniza Limited license under the Malta Gaming Authority license there is certain information we have to provide you now.

You can find all the relevant information about this service here – http://thepogg.com/terms-of-use/ and the terms of use for our complaint service here - https://thepogg.com/terms-of-use-for-dispute-resolution-service/

To summarise.

– Use of this service does not preclude your seeking redress through court proceedings .

– This service is free to use for both the complainant and operator.

– At any point during the procedure the submitting party retains the right to withdraw their complaint. This does not preclude our right to continue the discussion with the involved operator of general issues related to the complaint (i.e. insufficiently clear terms and conditions).

– You are not obliged to obtain independent or legal advice or representation, though you may choose to do so.

If you have any questions about the above, let me know.

Firstly - the MGA license requirements to verify customers at €2k are not a responsible gambling requirement. They are an anti-money laundering policy. The FIAU documentation is explicit that operators are free to continue to accept deposits, but cannot process withdrawals while the verification process is ongoing.

Next, specifically how long did this issue occur over? After how long had you deposited €2k? How much time passed after that point before you reached €50k in deposits? At what point was verification documentation requested? Please provide dates.

Finally, did you give the operator any direct indication of your gambling addiction? Did you self-exclude? Did you tell the operator you were a gambling addict? Or that you were losing more than you could afford?

You may find our free Responsible Gambling app BetBlocker useful. It allows users to restrict their internet capable devices from accessing over 18k gambling operator websites for between 24 hours and 5 years.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi!

Thank you for you reply.

I see my first depost om the site the 26/1 2021 on the site. The first days i played for smaller amounts.

During only march 2021 i played for over 2000euro.

I then kept playing day and night without any form of contact with the casino. Biggest withdrawal I made at one time was of 4000euro. I used their instant bank transfer for deposits and withdrawals.

The 28th of march 2022 I made my last deposit. I had then deposited around 50.000euro on the site.

The 25th of march 2022 the casino asked for SOW

I started uploading documents the 28th of 2022.

They approved some documents and declined some and kept asking for more to approve me as a player see a bit of those emails below

” [EDIT] (Mount Gold)

30 May 2022, 17:42 EEST

We are contacting you from customer support.

Thank you for providing us with the documents.

We have reviewed the documents uploaded, however, we require further documentation of how you finance your gambling with us since the uploaded documents do not suffice to verify your spending stated in the Source of Wealth questionnaire and the income provided.

We are required to do so by law and also to do our utmost to protect our players. Please send us further documents showing the funds used to play in our casino, such as the following”

————

Do you need anything more from me?

Kind regards

Kotten

Hi kotten45,

Can you provide the dates/amounts of your deposits and withdrawals?

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi!

Yes I have screenshots of them from the site and on my bankaccount, they are very many deposits and some withdrawals. Do I email them to you?

Kind regards

Hi kotten45,

Please email them to [email protected].

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi! I have not been able to see your response til now i Will email you directly.

Kind regards

Hi! I have sent you screenshots of all this per e-Mail.

Kind regards

Kotten

Hi kotten45,

Thank you for your email.

I've reviewed the attached information and the relevant regulatory documentation and at this juncture I cannot see valid grounds for a claim.

There are two aspect to this case:

- Customer Due Diligence (CDD) with regard to anti-money laundering/funding of terrorism responsibilities.

- Responsible Gambling.

With regard to CDD, and as previously mentioned, the thresholds wherein the operator is required to conduct CDD and potentially Source of Wealth (SoW) checks are specific to the prevention of crime. They are not structured to require operators to review any information from a responsible gambling perspective.

CDD can take a variety of formats depending on the risk of potential criminality that an account's activity exhibits. SoW checks are something that is required where the risk assessment has determined that the account is of high risk of criminal activity.

For lower risk accounts, SoW would not necessarily be applicable, and there are a variety of other checks that can be conducted in a non-obtrusive manner, checking registration information against publicly available sources, that would satisfy this requirement. In short the operator will not always have to request documentation.

While there are some factors that we would view as indicating that a higher risk status should have been attributed to your account, and hence a SoW check conducted, even where this was clear cut a failure on the operator's part to engage robust anti-money laundering checks would not provide grounds for a player to seek a refund. The regulator may look to engage sanctions due to the failure, but this isn't a refund situation.

So the timing of the SoW check would not provide grounds for you to seek a refund.

Likewise, the fact that the operator has continued to accept deposits while conducting your SoW check is in line with the regulations they are subject to. In fact, the FIAU guidance is explicit that the operator can continue to accept deposit/play, but that all withdrawals have to be withheld until such time as the SoW check is concluded, and where the player fails to provide the documents necessary to conclude the SoW check within 30 days the operator should then terminate the account.

Based on the information you provided above, the operator requested SoW documentation on the 25th of March 2022. They would be allowed to continue accepting deposits for 30 days after this point. You made your last deposit to the operator on the 28th of March 2022, 3 days after this request.

Failure to complete/comply with the SoW requests would not result in grounds for a refund of deposits on the basis of being unable to withdraw. The facility to withdraw would be accessible as soon as the SoW check was completed.

As such this does not mean that you would not be able to withdraw. We help many players understand and meet CDD requirements. It simply means that had you won you would not have been able to withdraw until you had provided the operator with the documents that they required. And had you taken longer than 30 days to do so, you would no longer have been able to deposit or play until the SoW check was concluded.

There are no grounds for a refund based on the above.

As to responsible gambling, the 50k in deposits you quote is not entirely representative of the reality of your activity.

While you did deposit ~56k over the 15 months that you were active at Mount Gold, you also withdrew ~38k. Your average monthly loss was only a little over 1k/month - a figure that isn't out of reach of a lot of people and comfortably inside the average monthly salary for someone in your country.

Furthermore, while there were months where you deposited significantly more than average, these map perfectly with months where you also withdrew large amounts, offsetting your higher than average deposits substantially.

Where the operator did decide to engage a SoW check, this was after 4 months of increased deposit/withdrawal activity, and two months where you've lost more than average, suggesting that the SoW check, in this case, was in fact a responsible gambling based action due to increased activity on your account.

Effectively, there's nothing that I can see in your activity that would by itself require the operator to intervene on your behalf or do more than they have done.

To make any viable claim for the return of losses there would need to be something beyond what the financials are showing. For instance, self-exclusions that were lifted without appropriate cooling-off periods being applied, or clear statements from you to the operator's support agents indicating that you were not in control of your play. Are you aware of anything that would further support your claim?

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi,

Thank you so much for clearing the rules regarding how it works with SOW for me that is very well explanined. I think it would be good if the casino knew how to explain it to.

Instead the casino have answered my initial request by stating that they did a source of wealth questionarie on me the 25th of march 2021 which they thought was OK. But in march 2021 I had a lower salary than in march 2022 when they did asked for SOW and did not clear me. The loss of 1200euros a months does not go together with my salary and standard living Costs. Which accordoing to them they must have known in march 2021 so the ”alert” should have come sooner than a year later Again. So I still do belive they did know about my issues and let me play above my financials which as I understand they do have to take actions of which they did not do until march 2022?

I am sorry for my bad english. I just want to understand my rights and what is correct.

I do understand my problems and own responsibility.

Kind regards

Kotten

Here is what they Said

[EDIT] (Mount Gold)

3 Feb 2023, 15:48 EET

Hello!

I hope this email finds you well.

As it has been mentioned earlier, we have checked you for the verification checks through your banking payment method. When it comes to the source of wealth verification, you were asked to fill in the source of wealth questionnaire on 2021-03-25, which you successfully filled in and your game play was in stated boundaries.

We performed all the necessary checks from our side and there were no irregularities.

Kind regards,

My salary is about 2000euro a month so i do not understand their bounderies.

Kind regards

Kotten

Hi, just wanted to add that they stated this when I asked for all my money back due to them letting me play irrisponsible. And then when I instead asked for my last deposits for not clearing my Sow it is about how I financed my last 4 months. It just does not add up to me. My Point now then is if I get it correct they should made som kind of regulations /limits towards me in spring 2021

Kind regards

Hi kotten45,

As discussed in my previous post, the SoW check that happened in March '21 is a CDD check, not a responsible gambling check. Your total deposits passed €2k in March '21 which requires the operator to engage further CDD.

Regardless, the average losses change over the period of your account activity. In March '21 you reached a high-point of 1.3k/month in losses. That *may* have been part of what triggered the SoW check, indicating a higher level of scrutiny of your account activity going forwards. A low level SoW check (asking some basic questions) and further monitoring over the subsequent period. Over the following months the average loss actually drops significantly. By May '21 the average loss is less than 700/month (the total loss is hundreds less than it was in March '21) and it does not tip back over 1k/month until Feb '22. It peaks again in March '22 when it reaches ~1.2k/month, and the operator moves to engage a SoW check, likely as part of a responsible gambling review of your account.

To be clear there is a degree of inference in the above - we cannot say exactly what has triggered the SoW checks that have occurred. But there is reasonable grounds to make educated guesses given the patterns in your activity and the timing of the various operator requests.

Your losses each month fall within a relatively small range, the average loss is within an affordability bracket for the average salary from your country of residence, where there were spikes in deposits these mirror months with larger withdrawals (in fact 3 of the 5 months with larger than average deposit you also won, and the other 2 high deposit months were right at the start of '22) and the operator also looked to review the affordability of your play when your average losses reach their peak. As stated above, the financials by themselves do not appear to cross any lines - never mind the relatively limited lines required by the MGA in terms of responsible gambling player activity monitoring - that would have required the operator to pro-actively act to restrict your activity without some specific signal from you that you needed them to do so.

If there's no direct indication from you that you were not in control of your play, there's not enough here that we could use to build a claim.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi,

Okey, Thank you!

I guess I just read and feel the law when it come to responsible gaming and player protection is not enough to protect problem gamblers like me. And that I do think casinos should have to have stronger regulations. So that you not can play for hours and hours and actually losing a lot of money and it being considered normal like all my deposits compulsive on salary dates and that you could see a patern that it is for chasing losses which I sometimes got some of back. I belive the casinos should have to have bounderies/limits det on their players.

I apprichiate that you took the time to explain this for me. I feel even more sorry for more players who Will play away their lives on casinos like this and it is all within what is considered normal

Kind regards

Kotten