Not sure anyone has been following the thread on Casino Guru which has over 700 pages or the media reports on this. Looks now that Mastercard/VISA have actually confirmed they will be taking action against a large number of casinos and formally requesting them to be removed as payment providers.
Mastercard and Visa Pledge Vigilance Following Gambling Investigation
Lots of other links available via Google searches. Basically, sites like Mystake.com and Instantcasino(plus loads of others) are taking payments from UK players by debit/credit card using fake merchants and dodgy payment providers like Payop, Quickbit, Bitsent and many more even the likes of dodgy Nigerian booksellers etc. The problem is that gambling is a regulated good much the same as weapons or alcohol. The incorrect coding is being used by these merchants to disguise transactions as online shopping, education services, souvenirs etc bypassing bank blocks that people have in place and the Credit Card gambling bans. It is against the law to use an incorrect code for gambling in just about every country in the world.
Looks like there are mass chargebacks now against these sites. Personally, have no sympathy for said sites – openly advertise on “Not on Gamstop” affiliate pages to lure problem gamblers in. The only way to clean up the industry is to stop companies like these breaking rule after rule and pretty much being engaged in money laundering.
Thoughts?