As far as an affiliate telling you that you could access from a banned jurisdiction I would be interested if you would PM me the chat logs you had with them. That is not something that we allow our affiliates to do.
I don't mean to hold you responsible but here you are wrong, I have myself visited numerous streams of Edward, the supposed owner of stake and he clearly said, you may use a VPN to access stake and if anything that is an invitation and suggesting others how to access from banned countries.