Vegas Hero - Son was self excluded and Vulnerable

Hi Tinamum - welcome to ThePOGG.com!

Your case is a complex one and while I'm sympathetic to the situation you describe I do need to make certain things clear before we go any further.

Gambling contracts differ from other contracts. Where a contract is declared void the objective is to return both parties to their starting positions. That cannot happen with gambling contracts.

A gambling contract is based on the outcome of an unknown event. Once the event has occurred, the parties cannot be reset to 'not knowing' the outcome.

To try and give a simple example of why this creates a problem consider purchasing a care. Where I buy a car and as a consumer decide within a reasonable time frame to return the car, the contract is declared void I simply return the car the seller returns my money and we are both reset to our starting positions. However where gambling is involve the only time that the purchaser ever wants the contract voided is if they've lost. We never encounter cases where a player wins and come to us demanding that the operator takes their money back because they were not mentally fit to enter into the contract.

This creates the situation where to uphold a claim based on mental capacity would open a flood gate where anyone who could demonstrate any degree of mental incapacity could sign-up to casinos, gamble, demand to be paid when they win and demand their losses refunded if they lose. For obvious reasons this creates an unsustainable dynamic unique to the gambling industry.

As such, unless it could be demonstrated that there is some reason that the operator should have been aware of your son's condition the operator could not be held accountable for preventing your son's actions.

Before a gambling company can be held responsible for preventing an individual from accessing their service the company have to have demonstrable knowledge that would require them to do so.

So the crux of this issue would boil down to, why should the operator have been aware of this issue before the events in question?

You mention that your son had previously self-excluded at another property on this license? If that's the case this would likely represent the strongest aspect of your claim. Do you have supporting documentation showing the request for a self-exclusion or where your son informed the operator about their gambling problem? It's not the end of the world if you don't, but it would make my job easier if you do.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Dear ThePOGG, Thank you for your time and looking into this, It really is appreciated. I understand the points you raise but he was [EDIT], I highly doubt if he had of won, that he would of stopped all of a sudden and took any winnings, [EDIT]. Is it normal behaviour for a person to deposit how much he did in under 24 hours? surely this must raise a flag? Or do they just keep accepting deposits until that persons account is emptied? Without any checks? Regardless if that person is ill, drunk , vulnerable or on self destruct mode. SR code provision 3.4.1.1(e)(i) customer interaction, which states: “1 Licensees must put into effect policies and procedures for customer interaction where they have concerns that a customer’s behaviour may indicate problem gambling. The policies must include: … 4 (e) specific provision for making use of all relevant sources of information to ensure effective decision making, and to guide and deliver effective customer interactions, including in particular … (i) provision to identify at risk customers who may not be displaying obvious signs of, or overt behaviour associated with, problem gambling: this should be by reference to indicators such as time or money spent”. Nobody can watch a person 24/7, I try my best I really do, but what I do expect though is a site to maybe raise concerns if someone spends too long without breaks or deposits too much money in short space of time, as that is all signs of a problem gambler. I also see they have very child friendly Interactive slot games, something that could clearly appeal to someone of a vulnerable nature( child or adult) [EDIT] hence I made it my duty he was banned from all online casinos and any that he had joined that he excluded for life for his own protection. Mistakenly I presumed that would be the end to the matter and it would not occur again, as he was in very distressed and upset at time and promised it would never occur again, security measures were in place to make sure, although he still managed to do this it seems. The bank has been very understanding, cancelled the card in question and are willing to help should VegasHero not be willing to cooperate, It was a debit card that has now been cancelled and I’ll be making sure that in future any card/account can no longer be used for remote purchases or any for any online site. I am unsure of the legal route regarding mental health, but a solicitor did legally advice me that "It cannot lawfully contract with a mentally impaired man and seek to keep monies obtained" and it is a route I am willing to go down should Vegas Hero fail to reach an agreement or discuss the matter, should it get this far then I will be left with no other option. My son did not purchase a product but played interactive games that has no financial or material lost to VEGASHERO, But has a great impact on my son financially. It is not Vegas hero's fault that my son has such a condition, but I feel that inadequate checks were carried out on a new player depositing such sums in a small time period, and they failed to respect the self exclusion request that was made prior to this event happening. Operators must not profit from their own failure to take reasonable steps to prevent self-excluded customers from gambling. If such a site wishes to profit from vulnerable people then so be it, but I find it disturbing and immoral.

Hi Tinamum,

Unfortunately the basic facts are that if you take 100 people in your son's position when they all stop playing some of them are going to be winners and some of them are going to be losers. What your asking for is the casino to pay the winners and refund the losers. As I pointed out in my previous post, this is financially unsustainable for any business.

And to be clear, this is far from the first case we've seen where a player or someone on behalf of the player has argued that losses should be refunded due to diminished mental capacity. This is not even the only case of this nature we have open at the moment.

The bottom line here is that this type of issue has to be viewed from a position that takes into account the bigger picture rather than just the situations where a player's lost and wants a refund.

Yes I'm familiar with the Social Responsibility code that operators are required to adhere to. But the facts of the matter are that these codes still take into account a reasonable time frame to allow the operator to act. In this instance less than 24 hours to identify an issue would not be considered irresponsible behaviour on the part of the operator. Your son's deposits were only beginning to enter into the level where they'd trigger a review of activity at the point where there activity ended. Had this been going on for an extended period of time, or had the deposits continued beyond the point that they did we would have expected the operator to catch this. But your case is sitting right in the zone where the events occurred in a very short space of time and the deposits are not massively unusual. Even if we want to consider the deposits to be on the high side, the casino team would still need time to manually review the activity and act which they've not had here.

For obvious reasons operators do not ask for full medical histories to be provide at the point of registration. There has to be an expectation that those responsible for adults with a diminished capacity will prevent the individual engaging with activities that they are not psychologically or emotionally equipped to deal with. I am not faulting you here - having dealt with the care of an individual with a degenerative mental condition I know how difficult it can be to ensure that they are supervised at all times - but I am saying that we cannot hold the operator responsible for a situation they would have had no way of knowing about and a very short window to assess even if we consider the indicators enough to be of concern.

With regard to your bank cancelling the involved card, I can't criticise the bank in taking this action, but it is entirely different. This is an easy decision for any business. There's no financial detriment to the bank to cancel the card. The operator do not have that luxury.

And again - your son's situation does have direct financial detriment to the operator. This is not a 'no victim' situation.

So to be absolutely clear about our position on this we cannot pursue the operator to refund losses based on your son's mental condition alone. The operator had no reasonable way of knowing about your son's condition in advance, the time frames in question are not of a length where the operator can be viewed as irresponsible for not having completed a manual review of the activity and the deposit levels are not that abnormal in their size that they would require an immediate source of funds check.

If you want to pursue your claim on this basis you would need to contact the UKGC directly or engage a solicitor. My personal opinion is that you do not have a case in this respect.

All the above acknowledged, I will say again, if your son previously self-excluded at another property on this license then you may have a valid claim on this basis. I need to know what evidence you have to support this claim?

Thanks,

ThePOGG

I had sent you an email regarding the self exclusion my daughter managed to locate, ill try and resend this.

An email was sent requesting self exclusion and has therefore showed that his request was intentional and does comply with the first line of the particular regulation of contacting customer services.

A email stating you want to self excluded should be enough to self exclude that person.

I also like to make it clear the casino will not speak to me on the phone or by email, I sent numerous emails.

It would of been nice to actually speak to a real person on the phone or at least have some acknowledgement from VegasHero.

All i ever had in reply is :

As advised previously, we are unable to disclose any account information unless it is with the account holder themselves.

Even though I explained why this would not be wise.

As stated previously I do appreciate that ThePOGG are trying to help

Hi Tinamum,

We've received your email. That's very useful - thank you! There are other factors to be considered here that I will need to discuss with the operator.

Unfortunately the operator are right - by Data Protection laws they are not allowed to discuss your son's account with you without either you being able to demonstrate that you hold power of attorney for your son or your son's direct permission. The potential fines for breaching this law reach into the 9 figure range so they will not take a chance on this.

Likewise, while we can engage in a general discussion of the issue, as above, to discuss the specifics of your son's account with the operator we would need similar documentation. Can you provide proof that you hold power of attorney or get and email sent to us from the email registered with the casino stating that you have permission to act on your son's behalf?

Finally, with regard to your comment about US law - online gambling was not illegalised in the USA to protect players. This was a political move due to pressure from the offline casino lobbyists who worried that online gambling could eat into their market. It was attached to an anti-terrorism bill in the early hours of the morning the night before the vote was due, so most of the congressmen/women voting on the issue would have been unaware of the specifics of this addendum. Far from protecting vulnerable players in the US this has effectively created a black market where entirely unlicensed and unregulated gambling operators still accept US players. This operators have no oversight and take a markedly weaker interpretation of what 'social responsibility' is.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

I sent you a document by email, thank you.

Hi Tinamum,

Thanks for your email. That is sufficient. Before we can go further I do need you to forward on some document that we can use to verify your son's signature. This can be a passport or driving license or the front and back of a debit/credit card in his name. If using the latter please ensure to block out some of the numbers on the front of the card and the security code on the back.

Once we can verify the signature I'll contact the operator.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi Tinamum,

Thank you - what you emailed through is sufficient to confirm you son's signature on the previous document.

You may have to provide these again to the operator and if so I'll contact you.

Please allow some time for us to discuss this issue with the operator.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi Tinamum,

I've discussed the email your son sent with to SpinIt asking for a self-exclusion. Unfortunately their servers have no record of this email coming through. As such we need to take certain actions to prove that this email was really sent.

What I need you to do is go to https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html and download the free trial of Camtasia. This is a very easy to use program that allows you to make a video of your computer screen. You then need to log into the email account the email was sent from, go to the sent emails, locate the email and open it. After that simply post the video on YouTube with private settings and share it with us at [email protected].

If you do that we can verify the authenticity of the email and I'll then go back to the operator.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Hi Tinamum,

I'm following-up on this - have you managed to create the requested video?

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Dear Sir/Madam,

As informed before I don’t have access to my sons email no longer, why did they not request this when it was sent to them when I made first contact? If they had of done then it could of easily done at the time but the majority of my emails were ignored.

It most likely happened when my daughter cleared all the computer as the password did automatically go inside the box but I can no longer get it to do this. I tried to reset this but the secruity questions are not even relevant to my son and I have no idea the answer to these as it seems my son may of put randon answers.

I know Pogg will probably not be able to help now, but as my sons condition has got worse, my main focus is my son at the present time.

In the future it seems I or my daughter will have to submit a court claim on my sons behalf at a later date as I believe we would have upto 6 years.

As my daugther will most likely be putting in for power of attorney for my son regarding the complex nature of his conditions and his latest set back.

Its just sad to see that they were not willing to come to any agreement or speak with me directly considering the nature of the complaint and my sons vulnerability.

Hi Tinamum,

Unfortunately these cases are of a complex nature and do take time to resolve. And as explained previously the operator are not allowed to discuss your son's account with you.

The email evidence that you submitted is only a screen shot of a text file and easily altered, hence our request. Given the nature of the claim this would have to be verified as legitimate before we could take action based on it.

It's unfortunate that you can no longer access that email address. If your daughter managed to regain access (you should try contacting the email provider) we'll be happy to look into this for you further.

Sorry we couldn't be of further help.

ThePOGG