Can online casinos snoop into your bank accounts?
A fairly disturbing case came to light recently, and one which sets a frightening precedent for the privacy of online gamblers. This case involves a player at William Hill who apparently had been gambling with them for some time and was a reasonably big player there. The player was contacted by support at William Hill who asked them to “justify their level of play” by providing financial records to prove that he or she was able to afford their gambling habit. The casino apparently wanted financial papers regarded the players income, including bank statements for 3 years and utility bills.
A quick scan of their terms and condition reveals that they are actually entitled to ask for these. This is listed under the money laundering section of their T & C’s.
In certain circumstances we may have to contact You and ask You to provide further information to us directly in order to complete the Checks. For this purpose, we will be entitled, at our sole discretion, to require that You provide us with a notarised ID or any equivalent certified ID according to the applicable law of Your jurisdiction or otherwise, proof of address, utility bills, bank details, bank statements and bank references. Until such information has been supplied to our satisfaction we may prevent any activity to be undertaken by You in relation to the Account or we may, where we reasonably believe that deliberately incorrect information has been provided by You, keep any amount deposited on the Account following the closure of the Account by us.
Now obviously all casinos need to ensure that they are not party to money laundering but 3 years bank statements seems a bit excessive by any standards. They also wanted the players proof of income and the player reported that they asked for other detailed information such as property records, savings. family savings and more.
Quite what prompted this level of intrusion is not clear, however William Hill have not responded to questions put to them by prominent members of the gambling industry on the question. Whether this is prompted by the new UK gambling laws but it does seem an excessive amount of scrutiny for one player to endure. One would think that William Hill would value large players such as this rather than interrogating them to this level.
It also begs debate as to where due diligence ends and intrusion starts. Over the many years I have been playing at online casinos I have never been asked to undergo this level of scrutiny. Of course I provide documents as requested to prevent money laundering but these are generally only a copy of ID, a faxback form, a utility bill, copies of any credit/debit cards used and perhaps a bank statement. Casinos have always accepted my decision to black out all financial information on my bank statements and my documents have always been accepted without quibble. If a casino asked me to provide three years financial information I would politely tell them where to get off and go and find a new casino who values my custom.
It will be interesting to see how this case develops and William Hill’s justification for all of this. Unfortunately, at the moment the silence seems to be deafening.
#gambling #onlinecasinos #williamhill
Related posts:
- Casino Complaints - how to complain about online gambling sites
- Gamblers Spend Money 7 Times Faster At Online Casinos
- Point of Consumption Tax Changes UK gambling laws
- More UK gambling casualities
Comments
Leave a Reply
