I am casually passing through; I have
not reviewed any evidence in this case, and also have not read the Betcoin.AG TOS. I hereby express no opinion about the case, either way. I just have a little suggestion for preventing and handling these types of issues in the future.
We understand that returning the deposit in many cases of multi-accounting is the industry standard and will be happy to do so if SBR decides that is appropriate.
Yes. Not naming names, so as to avoid dragging in an unrelated controversy—I recall earlier this year, a major site had a scam accusation for closing the multi-accounts of someone who had abused their sports-bet incentives. Since they returned his remaining deposits and presented clear evidence of abuse, his scam accusation pretty much just came off as stupid whining.
We do that on our own every day, however in this situation, we are able to prove that the multi-accounting was malicious to abuse the site's other TOS. Based on our evidence, we feel there is 0 chance that this player will be eligible to receive any winnings. In cases of obvious fraud, this is the rare time to seize the deposit, as it is the only thing that disincentivizes the player to return. Imagine being a cheating player and knowing that you can continue to return via VPN on as many accounts as you wish and the worst that will happen is you will get your deposit back.
Suggestion: Have your lawyers consider adding a
liquidated damages clause to your TOS, specifying a reasonable amount that multi-account abusers
agree up-front that they will pay based on your cost of catching them, the amortized estimated risk of your business losses if you don’t catch them, etc. Specify in TOS that this amount may be deducted from the balances of accounts caught in breach of TOS. Then, deduct that amount from the balances of accounts closed for multi-accounting (merging past and future balances, in case a persistent multi-accounter racks up a big unpaid abuse-handling fee); and return the remaining balances, if any.
This makes it clear that you aren’t just grabbing arbitrary amounts of money.
For comparison,
I have seen e-mail services that specify in their TOS a liquidated damages amount of around $100–150 per spam sent using their services. That is based on their abuse-desk staffing costs, reputational damage and the effort of repairing their reputations, etc. Of course, the difference there is that they usually cannot collect...
N.b. that in the jurisdictions with which I am familiar,
liquidated damages cannot be a punishment or a penalty. If multi-accounting presents a business risk to you, and your security team needs to spend hours of work time catching and documenting multi-accounts, then you may have a sound basis for a liquidated damages clause—ask your lawyer,
which I am not.
In this case, if you did not have a liquidated damages clause, then perhaps you may point out to the mediator (if any) the costs to you of catching the abuse you allege, the potential business risk as aforesaid, and the cost of dealing with scam accusations on the forum. Depending on what that adds up to, if your evidence is solid, then the fair resolution should be obvious.
I myself would prefer to design services so that they cannot be damaged by multi-accounters—then let people create as many accounts as they want. For example, provably fair games of chance, with no incentives that could be abused by multi-accounting. But of course, gamblers at some types of games will want the kinds of play (and even incentives) that are ripe for abuse. If you offer such things as people want, then I guess you do need reasonable and appropriate TOS to prevent abuse... Good luck.