Quote from: Cloudbet on February 19, 2019, 10:35:58 AM

Hi all,

There has been some discontent in the forums and we would like to take this opportunity to clear a few issues up.

Firstly, please be reminded that Cloudbet does NOT accept any USA players.

USA players are blocked from registering accounts, and are blocked from making bets. If any player from USA attempts to make an account, they see a message saying USA players are prohibited and are not able to sign up.

To reiterate, players from USA are NOT allowed on Cloudbet.

If we have strong reason to believe that a player has deliberately and willingly circumvented our terms of service by connecting from USA (or another restricted territory), we freeze their account while we conduct an investigation, and ask the player to provide documentation on their residency. Please note that this is only when we strongly suspect that a player has connected from USA, ie, there is specific evidence to suggest this.

In most cases, the player is cooperative and provides us with accurate documentation about their account and residency. If they are a USA resident, we close their account permanently, and return their account balance. This has been the case with several vocal users in the forum. Sometimes this can take some time, as every case is slightly different, but is always resolved eventually provided the player furnishes us with accurate information.

If they are connecting from a non-restricted country, we reopen their account and they can resume using their account without limitation.

Please note that in all cases where the player has cooperated, they have received their entire account balance, and had their accounts closed only if they were connecting from a prohibited jurisdiction (or there was a separate unrelated issue). If any forum members in this situation would come forward and confirm receipt of their account balances in full, this would be appreciated.

However - on rare occasions, the player is NOT cooperative and provides us with deliberately falsified or fraudulent information. In these cases, our investigations are significantly more complicated and time consuming.

There is one specific case that has received a lot of attention from the community - Swofty - as the dollar amount is particularly large. Here is our comment on the case:

As we have a duty of privacy to all of our players, we are limited in what we can share. The player may have shared some details, but we are not able to share any specifics or personal data.
That said, we can share definitively that the player has knowingly and deliberately provided untruthful, falsified and fraudulent information to both Cloudbet and the community.
The account holder is NOT the person that he/she states it is, nor are they in the location they state.
The player also knowingly and deliberately circumvented our terms of service by connecting from a prohibited jurisdiction.
The reason the player has not been paid yet is entirely to do with them circumventing our terms of service and providing falsified and fraudulent information, and nothing to do with our bitcoin liquidity (more on that below).
As the customer provided us with definitively falsified information, we suggested they reach out to Curacao Egaming - with whom we hold a licence - for assistance. This is the correct escalation for any player issues.
We intend to resolve this issue in a manner completely fair to everyone once we receive truthful and accurate information from the player.
It appears as if the player is now cooperating, so we hope to have a resolution to this case soon.

We have been encouraged by the way the community has responded to rally behind the player and help hold Cloudbet accountable, however in this case the player has not been truthful with the community. We encourage the player to share a more accurate story.

Separately, concerns have been raised about Cloudbet's ability to service the player's withdrawal immediately. You neednt be concerned - we hold enough funds to cover all of our player balances several times over, and we would never accept a bet that we could not pay in full immediately. We have been around since 2013 and have always celebrated our largest winners, and paid extremely promptly.

We would like to address this in the way requested by the community -- a signed message from a wallet that holds sufficient funds to cover any liabilities that may be due to this player.

We have signed a message from a wallet holding ~1157 BTC. All outputs spent to this wallet are from wallets that belong to us, and had not moved in over a year (we sent them to a single wallet for the purpose of this exercise) so they are not newly acquired coins. We would be happy to sign another message from any of the source wallets to prove ownership if required.

Wallet: 16vk7DahVgj4VsfKKdr1pG3QJ9FvzXpdJN
Message: cloudbet.com // no USA players allowed
Signature: HxO5QwkA/UNVePahBUzYgWL4Zz5syTC1H6/LeHICsvW0MYG9Q+PgOjNbzVXgXsLbadzFO2wLlz25nsbaXkeTXo4=

You can verify the above message in your bitcoin client, or by using the web interface here

I hope that addresses the community's immediate concerns. If anybody has any further questions or follow-up, please feel free to contact us directly via our support channels, or post a reply in this thread and we will do our best to address them in a timely manner.

Once more, to reiterate, Cloudbet does NOT accept USA players.

Thanks for your continued support, patience, and diligence.

The Cloudbet Team

Wow!

That was a jaw-dropping read because after all that Cloudbet still returned the 330 BTC to the user.

So why did they release the 330 BTC to the same user that they made all those claims above about?

As for the wallet holding 1157 BTC well that answers a lot of questions. They do not seem to be in financial difficulty.[/list]