Blacklisted Online Casinos: Avoid These Rogue Gambling Sites

While most offshore online casinos are honest and legitimately want to provide their customers with great entertainment, there are some bad actors who try to take advantage of unsuspecting players. Such criminals and scammers typically target inexperienced gambling enthusiasts, as they simply don’t know how to spot signs of danger. 

Worse yet, some of these rogue operators are quite subtle in cornering their victims, so it’s always a good idea to learn about their usual tricks and schemes.

All Blacklisted Casinos

This is how they get you:

Slow Payouts / Payout Denial

The best casinos are fast paying casinos (they’re also usually crypto casinos, as cryptocurrencies offer the fastest payments), whereas delaying payouts or refusing to honor withdrawal requests outright is a common rogue casino operator tactic. The idea is simple – win or lose, the money always goes to the house. In this case, there’s no way for you to get lucky, as apparently, the criminals running such sites don’t have the patience to wait for the house edge to do its thing over time.

It should be noted that in most cases, a rogue casino won’t acknowledge its wrongdoing or at least won’t do so right away. A typical process will involve making up excuses that may or may not sound reasonable at first or bombarding the player with requests for additional account and identity verification. Customer support will typically be sluggish to make you give up, and the demands will typically escalate and become more absurd over time. The rogue operator is also likely to come up with imaginary problems or quoted Terms of Service, which in such cases are basically designed to make defrauding the player easier.

The goal of this whole charade is to buy more time to attract more clueless victims, tire you out, confuse you, and potentially even leave you wondering whether the whole situation really was your fault. Not only will you lose your money, but you’ll likely also be left emotionally exhausted and angry. The only way to avoid this whole frustrating process with a rogue casino is to avoid making a deposit in the first place. Once they get your money, it’s typically already too late. This is why it’s crucial to only play at the best real-money online casinos and leave the scam sites alone.

Illegitimate Software 

While pirated software might initially sound harmless from a player’s standpoint, in reality, it’s more dangerous to customers than the developers. This is because the bottom line of a legitimate casino software company depends mostly on its reputation. The player, on the other hand, is exposed to many risks associated with possible modifications to the illicit games. 

If you play a pirated casino game, you don’t have the guarantee that it will be fair – all the certificates and testing that are supposed to guarantee the original software is random simply don’t apply when it’s hosted outside the legal business framework. In practical terms, your odds of winning might be lower due to some background modifications, the random number generator that delivers the results might be biased towards certain outcomes, and you won’t have access to the real progressive jackpot pool because it exists exclusively on the legitimate network. 

And if that wasn’t bad enough, you won’t be sure whether you’re being cheated or not unless you perform a statistical analysis. Needless to say, if you have enough data to make it meaningful and the rogue operator really is cheating, your money will be gone by then. 

Dishonest Bonus Offers 

Rogue or just unethical casinos can make it difficult for players to claim their match deposit bonuses or withdraw bonus winnings by structuring their Terms and Conditions in a dishonest way. For example, a shady casino can make the bonus playthrough next to impossible to complete, or so risky that trying to complete it will likely grind your account down to zero. 

Another somewhat common scam tactic is to introduce a limit on winnings that can be earned with bonus money. That way, you can theoretically still win, but the casino protects itself from being forced to honor a big payout if you get lucky, and thus the expected value of the whole bonus becomes negligible or even negative. A particularly insidious variation of this scheme is to cap the bonus based on total deposits and request the player to make an additional deposit in order to withdraw bonus winnings. 

Should you ever be confronted with a casino that makes such demands, your best course of action would be to cash out as much as you can, cut your losses, and join another US-friendly online casino instead. Never give such scammers what they want.

Payout Limits 

Dishonest casinos that are one step shy of engaging in outright criminal activity or sites that are simply poorly run or small sometimes force their customers to abide by excessively low withdrawal limits. While this is a major red flag, you should be aware that not every site that enforces limits necessarily wants to defraud you. 

In some cases, the operator might have a legitimate reason to put them in place, as not every site is capable of handling big requests right away. If you’re dealing with a legitimate operator that has those limits, you will typically be paid in chunks.

However, payout limits can also allow a rogue operator to play for time while keeping you on the hook and maintaining an aura of legitimacy in the online casino community. In such a case, you can expect your attempts at withdrawing all of your winnings to be faced with problems further down the line, especially if the casino keeps asking you for additional deposits.

In the end, if you notice that a particular casino has withdrawal limits that look problematic against the size of your potential payout, you should always double-check whether you really are dealing with a reputable operator.

This is who they are:

General advice aside, we prepared a convenient list of verified bad apples that provides you with some basic information regarding their past stunts. Avoid the sites below like the plague, and play at the safest casinos and real-money casino apps instead.

Virtual Casino Group / Ace Revenue Casinos:

• Planet 7 Casino 
• Raging Bull Casino 
• Cool Cat Casino 
• Silver Oak Casino 
• Royal Ace Casino 
• Captain Jack Casino 
• Ruby Slots 
• Club Player Casino 
• Palace of Chance 
• Dreams Casino 
• Grand Fortune Casino 
• Wild Vegas Casino 
• Slots Garden Casino 
• VIP Lounge Casino 
• Vegas Strip Casino 
• Ringmaster Casino 
• Le Bon Casino 
• 123 Slots Online

Virtual Casino Group is owned by Navtej Kohli, also known as Tej Kohli. Kohli made his fortune during the dot-com bubble by selling e-commerce software. In 1994, he was charged with mail fraud and conspiracy in California for a scam that involved convincing homeowners to sell their properties to sham buyers. Between 1995 and 1999, Kohli served time in federal prison. In the 2000s, he resurfaced in Costa Rica, where he launched an online gambling business.

Kohli’s international casinos operate without a license and are completely unregulated, which gives their customers no legal recourse when they inevitably face problems trying to withdraw their money. The modus operandi here is simple – never allow a cash-out while simultaneously bogging the victim down with baseless requests for proof of ID and claims of processing-related delays. 

Customer service is also notorious for trying to stall for time. This is theft, plain and simple, and the sham efforts at providing any kind of service are there to wear you down and keep you confused should you ever make the mistake of depositing your funds to any of those sites.

As is often the case, when the community became aware of Kohli’s shenanigans, he made a half-hearted effort at rebranding and relocated his operation to the Czech Republic. Over the years, his organization was associated with several groups operating in the gambling industry, including Audeo, Fast Track Affiliates, Gwages / Gambling Wages, Grafix Softech, Silver Arrow Marketing, and the Ace Revenue affiliate program.

Aside from fraudulent casinos, Kohli’s group also operates several predatory bingo sites, including 123Bingo, Bingo Avatar, Bingo Knights, Bingo Flash, Break the Bank, and Melina Bingo. Needless to say, stay away from them all.

AffPower / GameTech Casinos 

• Company Casino 
• Atlantic Casino Club 
• Crazy Casino 
• Times Square Casino 
• Osiris Casino 
• EnzoCasino 
• Cashpot Casino 
• Casino SuperLines 
• Casino Bordeaux 
• Madame Chance Casino 
• Casino1 Club 
• Ramses Gold Casino 
• Triomphe Casino 
• Park Lane Casino 
• Magik Casino 
• Deuce Club Casino 
• Cosmik Casino 
• OrientXpress Casino 
• EuroMoon Casino 
• OceanBets Casino 
• Slots500 Casino

AffPower is the name of an affiliate program representing a number of casinos associated with an Israeli-owned business group. The first signs that something was very wrong with this operation appeared in 2016 when LCB, a well-respected site dedicated to writing online casino reviews, discovered that all AffPower casinos were offering pirated Novomatic games. 

When the story broke, and AffPower officials were asked to comment on this matter, the games were removed, only to be replaced by a collection of unlicensed NetEnt games. These games were hosted under the subdomain name casinomodyle.com in a silly attempt to trick players into thinking they were dealing with legitimate NetEnt games offered via casinomodule.com.

Even worse, these pirated jackpots came with considerably lower jackpots and weren’t running on a certified NetEnt random numbers generator. Many experts warned that it was likely that the odds were also altered in a way that would be harmful to customers. To make this situation even spicier, LCB reported that it became a target of a negative SEO campaign instigated by AffPower. 

The pirated games were eventually removed, and AffPower tried to pin the blame on a subcontractor hired by their parent company, Game Tech. Supposedly, this subcontractor supplied AffPower casinos with unlicensed content without their knowledge – an excuse that doesn’t hold any water if you consider all the efforts to keep the pirated games running and bury the story.

What makes deliberate foul play more likely is the fact that AffPower tried to avoid the fallout of this scandal by launching new casinos via a shell company called Alpha Interactive Solutions, which were quickly recognized as a part of the network by their Curacao Master License – No. 1668/JAZ. 

At that point, many people were busy digging around, and it turned out that other businesses associated with this operation included Conan Gaming Limited, Conversion Affiliates, Crazy Affs, GameScale Europe, Prism Marketing, Supaze, and Tall Mountain Limited, just to name a few.

On top of all these dishonest and unlawful stunts, AffPower casinos are also known for hiding harmful clauses in their Terms and Conditions, which are designed to prevent players from withdrawing money if they get lucky. 

A typical trick they use is to cap the maximum allowed payout based on the amount of money deposited, which essentially boils down to holding the winnings hostage and demanding additional payments. This is an absolutely disgusting practice and would be reason enough to avoid all AffPower casinos like the plague on its own.

Curgam Group

• Slots Inferno
• Real Vegas Online
• Mighty Slots
• SlotLuv
• Plenty Jackpots

The Curgam Group is a moniker associated with a bunch of rogue RTG casinos tied to several fly-by-night companies with “Curgam” in their name, including Curgam Malta Ltd, Curgam N.V., and Curgam Ltd. 

The whole operation began in 2008 with the launch of Mighty Slots, which would have likely remained unnoticed by the casino community if not for a relentless spam campaign targeting seemingly random players. Unfortunately, the specifics as to how they were able to obtain their email addresses remain unknown.

The stories of players who took Curgam Group’s bait despite the obvious red flags went about as well as you can expect. Valid payout requests were ignored, payments were denied, customer service was making up excuses on the fly, and when all the usual tricks were exhausted, winning players were flat-out refused their withdrawals. 

All in all, the whole operation was unsophisticated and based on outright theft. Thus, if you come upon a casino that could be associated with this group, remember that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Gambling Federation / CGTV Games / Ever88 

• Golden Star Casino 
• Lady Luck Casino 
• Oceans Online Casino 
• Casino Italia 
• Casino Grande 
• Magic Vegas Casino 
• After Work Casino 
• Pink Lady Casino

Gambling Federation was founded in 1998 and supplied poker and casino software to several websites. In 2007, it was acquired by CGTV Games. As their unfortunate customers eventually found out, their software contained malicious code that blocked other casino domains. Players were not pleased about having malware installed on their PCs, so the company removed this code and tried to rebrand it as Ever88.

Other problems with CGTV included operating casinos without a license, the horrible customer support that frequently took weeks to reply to simple requests and complaints, and all kinds of withdrawal-related problems, from refusing to honor deposit bonus playthroughs to outright failing to process viable payout requests.

Finally, Gambling Federation casinos were likely running on a non-random RNG engine at some point, as players reported statistically improbable results while using the early versions of their software. While it’s impossible to verify these accusations, we decided to mention them based on the overall conduct of this operator.

Thankfully, all CGTV / Ever88 casinos went out of business in the 2010s, and it seems fairly unlikely for this brand to resurface again under a different name.

Pragmatic Play / Top Game

• Winward Casino
• Rich Casino
• Casino Moons
• Kings Chance Casino
• Thebes Casino
• Slots Village Casino
• Golden Palace Casino
• 21 Dukes Casino
• 7 Reels Casino
• Sunset Slots Casino
• Paris VIP Casino
• 7 Spins Casino
• South Beach Bingo
• Rome VIP Casino
• Europe 777 Casino
• Diamond VIP Casino
• Mona VIP Casino

The first major scandal involving Top Game occurred in 2009 when players reported disappearing Wild symbols in the slots offered by Rome Casino. This significantly impacted the return to player rate and made it nearly impossible to win in games like Diablo 13, Double Delights, or Wild Sevens. 

Rome Casino staff was informed about this issue, and Top Game eventually apologized for the problem and promised to reimburse the players. Top Game explained that the whole situation occurred because a testing configuration was used in a live game. Even assuming they were acting in good faith, that’s gross negligence on their part.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of Top Game’s stunts. Over the next few years, the company earned a terrible reputation for hosting unfair games, operating casinos with laughably low withdrawal limits, running fake stories about big winners at their casinos, disappearing progressive jackpots, and refusing or delaying legitimate payout requests.

One particularly egregious case of a delayed payment involved a customer being told that there were “more valuable players waiting in the queue,” and that’s after a casino journalist intervened on his behalf. Other ridiculous situations involving Top Game in the 2010s include engaging in DDoS wars with Affactive – a different casino operator – and threatening one of their own casinos with a lawsuit over unsettled debt.

By 2015, Top Game knew its reputation was in shambles and pulled off a classic rogue casino operator move – they rebranded as Pragmatic Play. As far as payouts were concerned, nothing changed – the ridiculous rules and limits were there to stay, and requests that couldn’t be refused took ages to process. 

On top of that, Pragmatic Play casinos frequently displayed fake seals of approval supposedly issued by companies like Norton or Gaming Labs with nothing to back those claims.

It should be noted that Pragmatic Play casinos often try to mislead players about who’s running them by directing them to a range of companies that seemingly exist only for disinformation purposes. 

The list includes Celicorp Limited, Dalberry Technologies, Engage Entertainment, IBID, Pragmatic Solutions, TG Services, and anything with Top Game in its name. Needless to say, we advise you to stay clear of those sites.

iGaming Software / FutureBet

• Average Joe
• Empire Casino
• Ace City
• Dukes Palace

Futurebet was launched in 2002 and operated as a no-pay scam right from the start. Initially, they preyed on sports bettors, but they quickly branched out into the online poker and casino space. 

As far as rogue operators go, they’re among the worst of the worst – their whole scheme was about finding marks who’d build sites powered by their products and pay them the initial fee, take high royalties on all profits, request high processing fees, and eventually refuse to pay either the winners or the licensees. 

Despite the fact they were running scams against gamblers for years, they managed to squeeze their way into several legitimate networks a few times. The best-known example of this happened in 2006 when they managed to join the OnGame poker network only to be promptly kicked out due to their fraudulent activities. 

The operation was continuously rebranded in an effort to attract more victims, and the aliases they used include GDI Software Services, JP Gateway, Steel Head Games, New Wave Marketing, and GameTech Solutions. 

All things considered, they’re definitely among the most criminal and dangerous rogue operators in the online gambling space. If you make the mistake of depositing your money to a site that has anything to do with these folks, you can essentially consider it gone. Their track record shows that they likely won’t even bother with making up nonsensical excuses.