What Happened
A student from India says Stake froze about $6,000 in sports-betting winnings until they passed an address check. The player says they sent their father's bills and bank statements, a notarized affidavit that chat support had suggested, and several government certificates. Each upload, they say, got an automatic reply asking for bills in their own name. Stake later said the KYC information was misleading.
How It Developed
- Complaint opened. The player said their family home has no power or water bill in their name, and asked Stake's managers to look at the other papers instead.
- Stake said its review found the KYC information misleading. It closed the account for good and kept the balance, pointing to its rules on accurate documents.
- The player denied this. They said they had asked support up front what proof of funds would work, since their money came from crypto, prediction-market bets and online work, and that they answered honestly.
- AskGamblers said Stake's evidence gave it reasonable grounds to suspect fraud. It rejected the complaint and banned the player from its complaint service.
Rejected
AskGamblers cited grounds to suspect fraud after seeing Stake's evidence, and Stake kept the $6,000. The player denies misleading anyone.
What Has (and Hasn't) Helped
Nothing worked: once Stake told the mediator the KYC details were misleading, AskGamblers sided with the casino. If you can't get bills in your own name, ask support by email which documents it accepts and keep the answer. Here, a chat agent's tip to get a notarized affidavit didn't stop the rejections.