Crystal Palace Casino (Warren Cloud / Oliver Curran): confiscation of $22,718 winnings
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Crystal Palace Casino (Warren Cloud / Oliver Curran): confiscation of $22,718 winnings
Crystal Palace Casino, under the management of Warren Cloud (more recently known as "Oliver Curran" and with the previous pseudonyms "Donald Fortune" and "Richard Brooks"), has been the source of many, many complaints over the few years it's been in business, while Cloud / Curran / Fortune / Brooks himself has an extremely chequered history in the online gambling business, starting with the spectacular fiasco at Rated Player Casino six years ago - see the Rated Player: Take The Players' Money And Run discussion at Winneronline - and followed up with a tenure at the Casino Extreme Group, which saw Extreme relagated to the worst of the worst of an RTG stable already replete with disreputable operators.
The most recent Crystal Palace Casino complaint is documented in the Crystal Palace Withholding $22,000 in winnings discussion thread at WinnerOnLine.
In summary:
The player, a compulsive gambler, opened an account with Crystal Palace Casino and played heavily. At the behest of his wife, he later emailed the casino requesting that the account be closed.
Crystal Palace failed to comply, and instead started emailing deposit bonus promotions to the player, encouraging further deposits and losses. Accordingly, the player obliged, depositing and losing.
At this point, the player's wife emailed the casino herself, demanding that the account be closed and that if they did not comply she would contest the charges with their bank in an attempt to recover the losses.
Crystal Palace did not comply and did not close the account.
The player now, and somewhat bizzarely, sent a credit card agreement form to the casino in which he agreed to not contest any subsequent charges - apparently, his wife had accepted this in return for being allowed to monitor her husband's play to ensure it didn't get out of hand.
Crystal Palace acknowledged receipt of this form and continued to accept his deposits.
Soon after, the player's luck turned around and he hit a couple of royal flushes at high stakes, leading to a cashout of $22,718.
The next day, his account was locked and the $22,718 confiscated. Crystal Palace subsequently gave the player two reasons for this: the wife's "threatening" emails, in which possible chargebacks were mentioned, and secondly, the fact that the player had requested his account be closed.
Since the player signed an agreement to NOT chargeback any deposits, which the casino acknowledged, the first excuse holds no water - this is presumably why they swiftly dropped it and tried another tack.
The second excuse, that the player requested his account be closed and as such he was not entitled to any winnings, is absurd to the point of farce. Everything in the player's account, up to the point he could no longer play, is owed to him as long as it is legitimately won. It is as simple and as clear as that.
1) Crystal Palace Casino did not close the player's account when requested - they encouraged him to deposit and play more.
2) Subsequently, Crystal Palace Casino acknowledged receipt of the player's credit card agreement form. This is acknowledgement that, past requests for the account to be closed aside, the situation was now that the account was open, was staying open, and was good for deposits. Closing the account at this point was off the agenda.
Neither of these excuses are legitimate - and as such, all one can conclude is that Crystal Palace Casino simply does not want to pay the $22,000 win. There is also nothing remotely unusual in this, as the casinos under Warren Cloud / Oliver Curran have a long history of problems, as mentioned above.
The player has now filed a complant with the Central Dispute System, but since their initial acknowledgement of the complaint they have been uncommunicative. He has also been in contact with Bryan Bailey of Casinomeister. I do not know the status of these communications.
Crystal Palace Casino owes this player $22,718.
9 Previous Comments
Nothing surprising with this situation regarding a Warren Cloud casino operation whatsoever.
Pay the man, close the account(s), end of the matter. Simple really.
Of course, I wish the player well. Cold comfort for a gambler who is 22k worse off because he gambled with the rogue that is Warren Cloud.
By 
Gamblog UK, at
6:24 pm
Montana Overseas Defunct.
For Posterity..
Welcome to the Montana Overseas Player Dispute system.
When submitting a claim, please take the time to be thorough when entering your information. Once we receive your request for an investigation, we will contact the operations involved and likely enlist the help of RealTime Gaming in researching your claims. For this reason we ask that you be patient and refrain from any further activity on the accounts listed until the dispute is resolved. Any further activity on your part could delay the results of our investigation.
Typically this process takes about three weeks but can take twice that depending on the volume of play or the number of operations involved.
Before submitting your claim we ask that you review the Terms and Conditions of the operations involved to be sure you understand the rules in effect while you were playing. To file a dispute, click here (link removed).
Sincerely,
The Player Dispute Team
Montana Overseas
By 
, at
11:47 am
I established contact with the Kahnawake Gambling Commission at the ICE in London last week, and we exchanged emails today. Hopefully they will expedite the issue. Kahnawake do not to date have a history of effective regulation, but maybe this is going to change in light of the US anti-gambling legislation and the subsequent need of the industry to pull its collective socks up.
By 100% Gambler, at
9:22 pm
One of the worst places for a compulsive gambler, for sure.
By , at
4:11 pm
Oh my God. I've should have read this earlier. Crystal Palace Casino stole $ 7.000,00 from me.
What happened:
May 27th 2007 we won a jackpot and (after loosing a bit) we wanted to cash $ 12.000,00.
In Crystal Palace Casino one can only withdraw a maximum of $ 5.000,00 per week.
We did however requested them all on the same day.
June 3rd we received the first $ 5.000,00 was approved.
Then we waited and waited.
We tried to communicate with support and asked them where are money was. They told us we had to send:
• FaxBack forms
• Credit card copies front and back
• Utility bills
• Drivers licenses
Which we did several times. Support kept telling us everything would be all right now.
June 26th they declined our withdrawal request.
July 24th they declined again
August 8th declined again
Every time we had numerous conversations with support and they kept asking us for our: FaxBack forms, Credit card copies front and back, Utility bills, Drivers licenses.
Every time we kept sending them in, although they should have received countless copies of them all.
We even sent e-mails for the attention of management and received no reply.
August 22nd Our withdrawal request was declined again and a manager withdrawal of $ 6.900,00 was approved.
We contacted support again. They told us because we redeemed a $ 20,- bonus on june 9th, we violated the terms of the casino.
The $ 20,- bonus stands in no proportion to $ 7.000,00?
Why should this take 3 months?
Why is it possible after a withdrawal request to cash a bonus?
All this time we were not aware of the $ 20,- bonus redemption.
So we asked for the help of KGC http://www.kahnawake.com. That was 3 months ago. they can't do shit.
By , at
4:32 pm
Unconfirmed reports of the death of Warren Cloud, owner of the Crystal Palace casino group, at Casinomeister.
By 100% Gambler, at
6:54 pm
Yes, it's been reported he died. It's confirmed he has died from heart attack in Spain.
By , at
11:38 am
This is a report on the death of Warren Cloud from a non-gambling source.
By 100% Gambler, at
6:48 pm