What Happened
A player from Spain says that after years of depositing at BitStarz, a win of about 3,000 triggered a document check, and once it was done the casino kept the money, put 80 euros back and told them Spain is a restricted country. BitStarz replied that the player had listed Norway as their country at sign-up and used a VPN to get around its block on Spanish IP addresses, and that it returned the last deposit when it found out.
How It Developed
- 2026-08-07Complaint opened. The mediator asked when the account was made, whether a VPN was used and what country was entered in the profile.
- 2026-08-10The player said they had passed KYC, registered two or three years earlier, and that a VPN was used because some games would not load from Spain.
- 2026-08-31A resolver invited the casino. BitStarz said the profile named Norway, a VPN had been used to bypass the Spain block, and quoted its restricted-country rules.
- 2026-09-07After seeing the casino's evidence, the mediator said the player was a Spanish citizen with Norway on the profile and a Dutch VPN on the connection. The player said they really were in Norway in 2019, working on a ship.
- 2026-09-09The mediator found no proof of Norwegian residence, treated the mix of wrong registration data and VPN use as a serious breach, and rejected the complaint.
Rejected
The mediator accepted that Norway on the profile plus VPN use broke the restricted-country rules; only the last deposit was returned.
What Has (and Hasn't) Helped
The casino's position held because two things lined up: a residence country that did not match the player's documents and admitted VPN use to reach games blocked in Spain. The mediator stressed it is the country you live in that counts on the form, not where you happen to be that day. The last deposit was returned.