spadester-scam-or-not

Welcome to my blog about Spadester

2010-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Beginning around June 2009 there has been a surge of postings about Spadester. What is true, and what is not? Why have some posts, and even entire threads, been deleted?

I'll be posting a lot of information. Not opinions. Just facts. If you have any questions/comments, please post a comment. I won't let your comment be posted, but I'll see the comment and make sure that it is addressed.

I even invited Spadester to follow my blog, and to notify me if they believe that I've published anything that is not correct. I promise to make corrections immediately.

Sorry about the phony date on this "Welcome" post - it's the only way I can get the post to appear at the beginning of my blog.

Spadester, a Status Update

2009-11-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

As I've written earlier, I'm no longer playing on Spadester. But people still contact me and I've seen other posts/emails about Spadester. So I'm providing this status update, based on such information.

For those people who are asking for help to get paid - sorry, but there's nothing that I can do.

For those people who are uncertain about Spadester - gosh, what else do you need to know? Why don't you try googling for "spadester scam"? You'll find lots and lots of complaints about Spadester not paying, and Spadester has just a few players. Then google for "poker stars scam" and "full tilt poker scam". They have hundreds of thousands of people who are online and playing all of the time. You'll see lots and lots of complaints about how the sites must be rigged because it's mathematically too remote for them to be losing (IMO - that's nonsense), but you won't see complaints about the sites refusing to pay.

As you can see on my blog here, there are no advertisements or links to other sites. This blog is purely a public service.

I've made public requests for any information, regardless of whether it is pro-Spadester or anti-Spadester. Guess how many times I've been contacted with requests like "Spadester is great - please stop putting anti-Spadester information on your blog"? Answer - zero.

The "fake" posts and blogs about Spadester being wonderful continue to grow. They are absurd. They are intended to trick you.

Spadester, Payoneer and Identity Theft

2009-08-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Payoneer disputed my assertion that personal information is exchanged between Payoneer and Spadester. Their privacy policy stated there was no sharing.

However, Payoneer just now confirmed that information is shared. If you go to the Payoneer web site today, you will see that the privacy policy has been updated. They specifically mention that your social security number will be shared.

As is well-documented elsewhere, there is a booming criminal industry for selling ID information, in particular when the social security number is part of the information. In my very long history with Spadester, there were many requests (and sometimes even demands by Spadester) for ID information to be sent. The requests included requests for documents that were likely to contain your social security number. Now, Spadester is demanding that you obtain a Payoneer card. Please refer to my ealier posts in this blog.

I have no evidence that Spadester is selling your identity with social security number. You should ask yourself "Why does Spadester want this information?" and "Is the information likely to be safe?".

Maybe my final post

2009-08-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Today, Spadester just closed my Spadester account. This is the 3rd time my account has been closed, but now that I have gathered so much data (especially in the recent emails from Spadester) I see no reason to attempt to get my account re-opened.

Many thanks to my Spadester VIP insider who provided me with much of the information that is in my posts below.

Of course, Spadester keeps all the money that is in my account. And what about that small payment that I mentioned in one of my posts? Well, somehow Spadester managed to get that erased from my Payoneer card. If I go to Payoneer to access my account, the Payoneer site says "blocked". I contacted Payoneer, and they said they cannot help and only Spadester would be able to help me.

We all should have known better. On legitimate gambling sites, you just click on a button like "Cashier" and you get paid. That's all there is to it. On Spadester, if you click to get paid, there are no options (e.g., send a check, credit to my Visa, et cetera). So a wise person would know that something is not right. Live and learn.

Please read my blog so you don't make the same mistakes as others and I have made. You're welcome to send me comments - I'll still respond. Here is a summary of your likely experience with Spadester:

You'll turn the free $4 starting money into a larger sum. Or maybe you'll make a deposit. Regardless, at some point you'll click on the Cashier to ask for a payout.

Sometimes that causes an automatic email to be sent to you. Sometimes nothing will happen, and you'll have to engage support@spadester.com yourself. You'll be asked for all sorts of ID. Eventually, you'll be told that you need to get a Payoneer card, and Spadester will send you a link for how to get a card. Maybe that will get you suspicious, after all, why isn't the link already on the Spadester site? Other Payoneer partners have links right on their sites.

Payoneer will require your social security number, and begin the approval process. They send your information to Spadester. [Payoneer Customer Support disputes this claim I've made; however, I do have proof. I am currently discussing this issue with Payoneer.] Spadester decides if they want further ID from you, and communicates to you via Payoneer. Or, Spadester may contact you directly. That depends on how you have been engaging Spadester with your emails.

Eventually, Spadester may make a small load onto your Payoneer card. Maybe not. If you are so lucky to get something, make sure to withdraw it immediately before Spadester does. That one-time payment will be all that you ever see from Spadester.

Obviously, I have not done an exhaustive study of everybody's experience with Spadester, so the above "likely experience" is merely my conclusion after doing extensive research.

When will you be paid?

2009-08-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

New news for all of you players on Spadester. Let's not dwell on past history - I've seen enough of the older postings where players were never paid. Here's the latest news. Spadester can now make instant payouts. I don't mean you'll have to wait a few weeks or a few days or even a few hours. Spadester can pay you instantly. But that is only if they want to pay you.

So is Spadester going to pay you? I've used my contacts with Spadester to pose this question directly to a Spadester VIP.

I'll update this post soon and give you all the details... Finally, I received the last word from Spadester. Read on...

I've received the final response from the Spadester VIP. I won't publish his name (but I'm happy to send it privately to anybody who requests it), since I don't want him to lose his job. I'll also gladly forward any of the Spadester emails that I've received to anybody who desires them.

The answer is, unfortunately, no Spadester really did not change. You will not be paid. You might be lucky enough to get a small payout, to encourage you to play more on Spadester (and, of course, make deposits or give more ID to Spadester), but that will be all.

In case anybody is interested, Spadester's last few emails to me were requests to have me modify posts on another web site. I told them that I didn't have such privileges. According to the rules on that web site, nobody can edit the posts. Spadester said that since I can't edit the posts, then they won't honor my payout requests. I was confident that Spadester would eventually send me a reason why they wouldn't pay me. I just didn't expect it would be such a ludicrous reason. I guess they were running out of excuses...

And, during these last few emails, Spadester told Payoneer to approve me for a Payoneer card. Just minutes after Payoneer granted approval, Spadester made an immediate small payment to the card. So, that's how I know that Spadester can make immediate payments, if they want to.

What are the payout options?

2009-08-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

First, go elsewhere in my blog to see if you're going to be paid. Please don't assume that you're going to be paid, just because I have a post about the payout options.

Can Spadester do a wire transfer to your bank account? Well, obviously they can. Anybody with a bank account can do a wire transfer to any other bank account. But Spadester won't, regardless of what it says on their web page. I received confirmation of this just a few days ago.

Can Spadester send you a check? Again, obviously they can. But they won't. This confirmation came a few weeks ago. Note that they did send checks in early 2008, but now they state that they can't.

Can Spadester transfer to a Payoneer card obtained via the Spadester link? Yes. That is possible.

Can Spadester transfer to a Payoneer card that you obtained from somewhere other than from Spadester? I don't know. Look at my answers to the other questions, and make an educated guess yourself.

Can Spadester transfer to a different (non-Payoneer) prepaid Master debit card? This works just like a wire transfer, so they obviously can. But they won't. This confirmation came a few days ago.

Can Spadester transfer to a Visa card? I don't know.

Can Spadester transfer to Paypal? Nope. I've been monitoring this since 2007, and this was never an option during that time. Still isn't. However, there were some posts in the Spadester Forum (which have since been deleted) that Paypal was possible when Spadester first started, but then Paypal terminated the relationship because of unsatisfactory practices by Spadester.

Is there risk of identity theft?

2009-08-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

That is something only you can decide. There has been just one case of theft that has been publicized, where it was stated that Spadester used the password of a player (who was also an affiliate) to steal many accounts (e.g., Yahoo email) of that person. There have been other cases of blogs being mysteriously erased, but I have seen no documentation as to how that happened. However, I've only seen cases of "spadester is bad (or similar wording)" postings being mysteriously removed. It does not take much insight to figure out what has been happening.

There are also many oddities that some people find troublesome. Usually, ID is required when you open an account. Then you need to show ID to make withdrawals from your account. That makes sense. However, Spadester does not require any ID to open an account. For what purpose do they need your ID when you want to make a withdrawal from your account? There is nothing to compare it against.

Another oddity is the types of ID that Spadester asks from you. They'll want your social security number and an electronic copy of your signature, plus any number of other scanned IDs. Heck, they even asked me to send them copies of some of my IRS tax forms.

One more oddity is the relationship between Spadester and Payoneer. Any ID that you give to Payoneer will go to Spadester. [Payoneer Customer Support disputes this claim I've made; however, I do have proof. I am currently discussing this issue with Payoneer.] Payoneer does not care about your ID, but Spadester does. Payoneer will wait for Spadester to approve your ID before granting you a Payoneer card. I even received an email from Spadester, telling me that they told Payoneer to approve me.

Another oddity - Spadester sent me an email, stating that my ID information is automatically deleted by Spadester after 3 months. I don't believe it.

Another oddity - Why does the Spadester web page state that ID information only needs to be sent once, if Spadester is going to delete the ID information after 3 months?

One last oddity - Why does Spadester want your ID if they are not going to pay you anyway? What is Spadester going to do with your ID?

So, use your judgment before giving ID to anybody. I've received emails from Spadester with phrases like "trust me" or "I promise", but after doing as they request, the promises were never kept. Trust me :)

Is Payoneer legitimate?

2009-08-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

I don't think they are criminal, but there definitely is monkey business going on. Payoneer will insist on getting your social security number. That is standard for a US Bank, and Payoneer works through a US Bank. But Payoneer doesn't care about your social security number or anything else about you. They just give all the information to Spadester. [Payoneer Customer Support disputes this claim I've made; however, I do have proof. I am currently discussing this issue with Payoneer.] And Spadester tells Payoneer whether you should be approved. Spadester will likely tell Payoneer to ask you for scanned copies of various ID. And Payoneer will send them to Spadester.

Payoneer charges lots of fees. I don't think there are any hidden Payoneer fees, so you can decide if you like the Payoneer fee structure. Personally, I think it's ridiculous. Also, Spadester charges a fee if you transfer money to Payoneer, so you'll pay twice (once to Spadester and once to Payoneer). Then you'll pay twice if you try to take out money from an ATM (once to Payoneer and once to the owner of the ATM - I searched high and low and couldn't find any surcharge free ATMs). You'll also pay an activation fee plus monthly fees, but all of that is documented when you apply for the Payoneer card.

Blogspots with the term "spadester"

2009-08-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

Many people go to blogger.com to create personal blogs, and then put all sorts of information into their blogs. Why would anybody go to blogger.com to create a blog that was dedicated to just issues about spadester? And why would a person make sure that “spadester” was part of the URL?

I found the following blogspots with “spadester” in the URL.

spadester-scam-or-not.blogspot.com
spadesterisascam.blogspot.com
thespadester.blogspot.com
spadester-scam.blogspot.com
spadester-payout.blogspot.com
spadesterisnotscam.blogspot.com
spadesterpayout.blogspot.com
spadesternopayout.blogspot.com
spadester-no-payout.blogspot.com

NEW - and as I mention in my comments that I added below, here are a couple more spadester blogspots that just popped up:

spadester-is-not-scam.blogspot.com
spadester-no-payout.blogspot.com

Perhaps there are others. Certainly there are other blogs that talk about spadester, and some of those blogs are even dedicated to just spadester. Perhaps I’ll talk about those blogs another time. Meanwhile, please take a look at what I have to say about the above blogs.

spadester-scam-or-not

What an excellent blog! Well, I hope you think so. It’s my first attempt at a blog site. People start issue-specific blog sites for either of two reasons: they want to complain about something, or they want to make some money. What’s my reason? Money, of course. Here’s the deal. Spadester recently claimed to have rectified all of their problems, and has promised to honor my payout requests. They have also asked me to make some positive posts about spadester. So I started this blog to make truthful posts about spadester. If what they claim is true, then all of my posts will be good posts. And since Spadester can now make immediate payouts, my posts on this blog should coincide with Spadester making the payouts from my account.

And why did I put “spadester” into the URL of my blog site? Simply to get more hits if anybody searches for “spadester”. I suppose that would be the reason why anybody would use “spadester” in the URL, but now I’m just conjecturing…

spadesterisascam

This blog is clearly created by somebody who is upset at something. I have no information to add.

thespadester

This is a very interesting blog, but only interesting to those who are aware of its history. The “Spadester.com Launch” currently has 11 comments. But if you go back in history (just a couple of weeks ago), there were many, many more comments. Somehow, all of the negative comments were removed. If you read the remaining comments, they don’t all make sense, because some of them were replies to the negative comments – and you can’t see the negative comments because they were removed.

As a test, I tried posting a comment recently. My comment did not contain information that was favorable to Spadester, and the moderator did not publish my comment on the blog.

Since this blog was obviously not created by somebody who is upset about something, it must have been created by somebody who wants to make money. I don’t who those people are, so I can’t help any further.

spadester-scam and spadester-payout and spadesterisnotscam

These blogs are so similar that I can present my information about them together. These posts don’t seem to be created by people who are terribly upset, so the creators must be out to make money. Again, I don’t know who those people are.

It’s interesting how these three blogs have different creators, but have practically identical content and style. And they were all created on approximately the same day. I think that’s enough to say, but let’s look at some of the comments, mostly because I find them so humorous. First, from the spadester-scam blog:

Comment by JJ – The initials “JJ” are very interesting. There are many posts on other sites, proclaiming the greatness of Spadester where the author is JaymeJbo. The language and style of those other posts are very similar to those by this JJ comment. Is JJ the same as JaymeJbo? I don’t know, but it sure seems interesting. If you look around for those JaymeJbo posts, you’ll see he uses many aliases. There’s “Jayme”, “jaym” and “jaymelee_122”. Maybe this is just another one of his aliases. Hey – get a look at the author of the spadesterscam blog itself. The author is “JJ”; however, the style of writing in the blog is totally different than the style of the JJ comments.

Now let’s look at the comments on the spadester-payout blog. Currently, there are just 3 comments. Let’s look at them all:

Comment by abbiepattenson – She writes that she enjoys the bank transfer feature of Spadester payouts and has never had a problem. That’s total fiction. I received an email from Spadester just a few days ago, where it said that bank transfer is *not* supported, and Spadester would fix the information on their web site.

Comment by annu – He (She?) thinks Payonner (I guess that’s Payoneer) is cool. I have a Payoneer card and there are fees for everything. Also, fees for nothing! They charge a monthly fee even if you don’t use the card. That sure isn’t my definition of “cool”.

Comment by Neo – He thinks there are competitors making the bad comments about Spadester. But last time I checked, there are no other web sites that let you wager money playing spades. There are no competitors.

There’s currently just one comment on the spadesterisnotscam blog:

Comment by Wilson – Payouts are so fast. Right. I’ve been waiting over one year. As I wrote elsewhere, Spadester has promised that this has been corrected. I’ll provide an update, elsewhere on my blog.

Something to make you laugh

2009-08-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

I changed the date of this post, so that it appears down low on my blog. That way, it will be a "reward" for those of you who read my entire blog.

If you correspond with Spadester, you'll find that their written English is not very good. Recently, there have been lots of well-written blogs about Spadester. These blogs contain lots of obviously false information, some of it copied from blog to blog, despite the blogs claiming different authors. Sometimes, you even see the same incorrect English being copied, for example, you can see the use of the word "weary" misapplied in multiple of these blogs (I think the authors meant to use the word "leery"). These blogs also have immediate "followers" subscribed on the blogs, and also immediate comments posted by multiple people. It's also interesting how these blogs get created with names geared to people who might do specific searches, like "spadester-payout", as well as, "spadester-no-payout".

Continuing with my conjecturing...My guess is that Spadester has hired copywriters to create these posts. I imagine the copywriters were given specific instructions (e.g., use both "spadester-payout" and "spadester-no-payout"). Also, I expect the copywriters were given instructions about what to write about, e.g., both the Real Money and Play Money features of Spadester.

Now for the funny part...It appears that the copywriters sometimes got confused with the instructions. On two of the blogs that I mention elsewhere, I think the copywriters were supposed to write about the Real Money and Play Money features. Instead, they wrote about the Payout and No Payout features. They go on and on about how great those two features are. "Oh my, how much I love both the Payout and No Payout features. I've never had any problem with either the Payout or No Payout, and I love them both." Of course, the comments also say how great the Payout and No Payout features are, too.

Hope you get a chance to read those actual blogs, before somebody notices and makes corrections.

As you know, I publish the facts and let you draw your own conclusions. So please excuse and ignore my commentary above - I just felt it was necessary to point you to the joke.

More false web sites

2009-08-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'll just update this post as I run across more obviously dishonest web sites about spadester. I won't bother your time giving you everything that is fake, but I'll at least indicate something so you can be sure that the site is dishonest.

spadesterscam.wordpress.com - There's a comment about Paypal working great. That isn't even an option that Spadester claims it has.

I'm fudging the date of this post, so it displays at the bottom of my blog.