Real Vegas, Fictional Payouts
Another joke of a casino owned by the Curgam group, Real Vegas Casino was known for their fictional payments. In other words, they would either refuse to process players’ withdrawal requests or prolong them indefinitely until players gave up and made peace with the fact they were scammed.
General Information
Real Vegas is an online casino founded in 2005, under the ownership of the infamous Curgam NV group. This is one of the least player-friendly groups in the online gambling industry to date. They are notorious for delaying payments and refusing to discuss player issues and complaints. In several instances, the withdrawal processes dragged out for over a year. Additionally, the casino’s customer support would keep telling the players that they’d receive their winnings, but after several months, would notify them that the entire process would have to start over from scratch. Casinos under the Curgam’s management fall into the category of the most rogue casinos this industry has ever seen.
Moreover, the Real Vegas Casino was licensed by Costa Rica — a regulatory body that hands out licenses to anything that even remotely resembles a casino. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the players of the Real Vegas Casino enjoyed no protection and were repeatedly ripped off by Real Vegas.
First Impression
The clues we managed to gather lead us to believe that the Real Vegas online casino no longer exists. At least not under that name…
The Real Vegas Casino’s website is no longer accessible. Instead, when you visit it, you’re automatically redirected to a seemingly unrelated casino named Cafe Casino. We won’t get into details regarding this establishment. However, it’s safe to assume that they’re somehow connected to Real Vegas, and by association — the Curgam group.
While it was still up and running, Real Vegas catered primarily to the US audience. That and the fact that they accepted Bitcoin and offered no-deposit bonuses seemed to be their main selling points. But eventually, it becomes difficult to ignore the many eerie similarities between Real Vegas and Cafe Casino.
We can’t say with absolute certainty that the casino Real Vegas’ URL redirects to is operated by the same people, but we wouldn’t rule out the possibility.
Games and Software
The one thing Real Vegas Casino had going for it was their software. The casino was powered by RealTime Gaming, a leading software provider for the US market.
This meant that you could enjoy a wide range of remarkable casino games, each with a unique and exciting theme. And apart from the substantial game library, the stability and fairness of RTG’s games are what sets them apart from other software developers, as well as the main thing players praise.
Furthermore, all RTG-powered casinos provide you with an option to easily download and enjoy their games without any lag or delay between the spins.
There don’t seem to have been any complaints regarding Real Vegas’ games and software selection. If anything, the fact that they opted for RealTime Gaming software was the reason players kept coming back, despite the casino’s constant issues with processing withdrawal requests.
Bonuses
The Real Vegas Casino tried to lure in new, unsuspecting players with astronomically high bonuses. Their welcome bonus offered an unbelievable 4900% up to $980. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something’s up with this incredibly “generous” casino bonus.
The minimum amount you’re required to deposit to claim it is $20. And since the bonus goes up to $980, regardless of whether you deposit $20 or more, you’ll end up with $1,000 in your account. However, the wagering requirements for this bonus are even more ridiculous than the bonus itself. To be able to claim the winnings from bonus play, you’ll have to meet a staggering wagering requirement of 120x deposit + bonus.
Whichever way you look at it, you’d have to wager $120,000 at the casino if you decide to play with this bonus. But wait, there’s more. The maximum Real Vegas Casino would allow you to withdraw while playing with this bonus is $200. The bonus itself is sticky, of course. This means the original bonus amount is removed from your account balance during checkout. So you’d have to wager $120,000 and end up with at least $1,180 to withdraw the $200.
We can’t help but wonder who in their right mind would accept the bonus terms and conditions Real Vegas Casino has set. This and other bonuses they used to offer were deliberately created to make it as difficult as possible for the players to withdraw a single cent. In hindsight, it was just one of many rogue elements of this scummy casino.
User Experience
The Real Vegas online casino was blacklisted by the online gambling community for unethical business practices. The decision wasn’t difficult since there were countless player complaints on every forum and watchdog portal you could think of.
All of these complaints point to the obvious — Real Vegas Casino was deliberately delaying withdrawal requests and leveraging every available strategy to justify not paying their players.
Unfortunately, contacting their customer support was a fool’s errand. They were in on the scam and would use their skills to keep you spinning in circles until you eventually gave up. Customer support was there merely to maintain the illusion that everything was in order, while the scumbag operators lined their pockets with players’ money behind the curtains.
Real Vegas’ age-old scam revolved around luring new players in with a $50 no-deposit bonus, and then requesting deposits for “verification purposes.” In one instance, a player was requested to deposit $100 to claim the $200 maximum winnings from the no-deposit bonus.
If that isn’t rogue, then we don’t know what is. But it gets even worse. As you might’ve expected, if you’ve deposited to be able to claim your winnings (ridiculous, by the way), you’d have kissed your money goodbye. It would take months to even get your deposit back. And whether you eventually got paid your winnings depended on the mood Real Vegas’ management was in.
You could call, write e-mails, attempt to live chat… It would’ve all been in vain. The casino relied on internet anonymity and lack of regulation to pocket your money. And there was nothing players could do.
Where’s Oliver?
There are plenty of examples online of Real Vegas’ customer support misconduct. Here, we’ll share the one that we’ve found the most entertaining. It revolves around the elusive “Oliver” from the casino’s customer support, who seems to be the only one able to process withdrawal requests.
In this specific example, the player waited 22 whole days to receive just a part of their winnings. Naturally, they had to contact the casino’s support multiple times and write half a dozen e-mails to finally get the payment. Preposterous waiting time aside, what caught our eye was the response the player received from Real Vegas representatives.
Apparently, the casino was late with the payment because Oliver — the only person in their support team capable of processing a withdrawal request — was in the hospital and still recovering. The player got their first third of the money they requested but never received the rest. And when they contacted the support again, they would always come up with new excuses for Oliver.
He would either be on a business trip, on vacation, or out sick. It seemed like the mystery man was anywhere but at his workplace. It’s like you were playing the game of “Where’s Waldo,” except you were looking for the non-existent Oliver.
This went on for months until the player eventually gave up. As you can imagine, the casino closed long before paying out the $4,000 they still owed this user.
Pros and Cons
PROS No longer exists, at least not under the same name (we would avoid Cafe Casino, as Real Vegas is redirecting to them) | CONS Weak license which offers no protection to playersPainfully slow withdrawal processKnown for refusing withdrawal requests without explanationUnwillingness to resolve player issues or work with mediatorsWere owned by the Curgam NV group, the least player-friendly group in the industry |
Our Verdict
We consider it our mission to root out rogue pits like Real Vegas and help players find good, legitimate casinos to play at. So we can’t help but feel relieved now that Real Vegas is out of commission and won’t be scamming anyone else.
A horrible casino with a disgusting attitude, Real Vegas was a menace to the online gambling industry. When you intend to wager real money online, you have to be extremely careful. There are tons of rogue casinos attempting to scam players out of their legitimate winnings. So if you see another online casino behaving in a similar fashion, avoid it at all cost.
Casino Rating
Customer Support: 1/10
Cashout Time: 1/10
Software: 8/10
Jurisdiction: 2/10
Total: 3/10