Update 2/17/14 – Players have reported getting paid by Winner Poker after waiting as long as eight months.
An online poker pro started a thread at the Two Plus Two poker forum where he stated Winner Poker, a member of the iPoker Network, suspended his account with a $60k balance. Another player has come forward stating that his account is locked with over $20,000 in it.
4Flush caught up with the original poster, known as Fees at Two Plus Two, to discuss his situation. He tells us that he is an American that tours the world to play online poker on many international networks. He played at Winner Poker from Australia, Canada and Thailand. While he has no issues withdrawing from other international sites, Winner Poker has denied his cashout requests. His Winner Poker account remains locked even though he states that all requested documentation has been submitted multiple times. After these attempts, Winner Poker support requested that the player mail notarized documents to the Philippines.
Fees discovered his account was locked on May 21, 2013. This was one day after the date listed on an iPoker Network internal email that required all skins to freeze accounts under the affiliation of PokerVIP that did not comply with a “Know Your Customer” procedure. The network asked all skins “to confirm that Poker accounts are not coming from any banned territory” by May 20th.
PokerVIP, which once did business as iPokerVIP, is the affiliate Fees used to create his Winner Poker account.
A PokerVIP representative expressed the company’s support for the player in the same thread:
We’ve been contacting Winner & Efi daily to push them to allow Ryan to cash out his money. The response we’ve received is exactly the same as the response Ryan has received.
4Flush interviewed a second player in the same situation. Two Plus Two member Jdalla reports that he has $20,845 in a locked account at Winner Poker. His affiliate is also PokerVIP. He has been trying to withdraw his funds since August 8th. This is when he first discovered his account was suspended. He had not logged into Winner Poker in months.
Jdalla tells 4Flush that he played at Winner Poker while in Mexico and never logged in from the U.S. He has exchanged an estimated 15 emails with Winner Poker in the past few weeks but the issue is still not resolved. Support has told Jdalla that they are waiting to hear back from the relevant department. Support will not give him the appropriate contact information for that department so that he may contact them directly.
4Flush has been investigating this situation for several weeks. Our investigation has shown that Winner Poker is a white label Playtech site. Its support is handled by a company called Paragon. A match of an address supplied to a player by support and several corporate profiles confirm this. According to the company’s LinkedIn profile, it is a subsidiary of Playtech that is located in the Philippines. Players that are experiencing problems with Winner Poker or any other white label may want to file a complaint directly with Playtech here.
4Flush reached out to representatives from PokerVIP and Winner Poker. PokerVIP did not respond to our requests for comment. One of our requests for comment to Winner Poker received the response “I will check with my poker manager”. Playtech does not have a contact email listed on the company’s website and a Google search did not reveal a press relations department.
(Updated to correct tag and typo errors)
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