In the fight against illegal online gambling

The law firm Lenné has long fought on behalf of its clients to recover lost stakes in illegal online casinos. Since in Germany both the organisation of public games of chance on the Internet and the participation in payments in connection with illegal online games of chance is prohibited under the State Treaty on Gaming, the persons concerned generally have a good chance of recovering part of their stakes from the payment service providers. One of our cases recently came to the attention of the Hessenschau.

This is a case that can often be found in connection with illegal online gambling: a father of a family began to participate in online gambling – initially only with small stakes. But the stakes grew until he gambled away €100,000 and went bankrupt — a catastrophe for the whole family.

With the help of the law firm Lenné, the father of the family has already been able to recover some of his money from PayPal. The next step involves the remaining payments that he had made by instant bank transfer and credit card.

This is one of the reasons why, according to the State Treaty on Gaming, the organisation and brokerage of games of chance on the Internet is prohibited in Germany. In contrast to local legal casinos, online casinos have no control mechanisms. Here the players can gamble without limit, and in the end, the bank always wins. The addiction potential is enormous – as the case described here illustrates.

Transactions must not be carried out by PayPal & Co. in the first place

Since participation in payments in connection with illegal online gambling is also prohibited, the law firm Lenné always first contacts the respective payment service providers in such cases, i.e. banks, credit card companies or online payment providers such as PayPal. They should not have made the payments in the first place. With PayPal, this procedure works in eight out of ten cases.

Recently, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed in a ruling that the operators of online casinos could not invoke the freedom to provide services applicable in the EU to offer their online games of chance in Germany. But there are also those, such as Hesse’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU), who want to legalise online casino games. In an unregulated market, players could in any case not be effectively protected, and the Länder would lose considerable revenue in the process, Beuth said.

However, the State Treaty on Gaming will initially remain in force until 30 June 2024. In addition, the European Court of Justice has repeatedly confirmed that EU member states can regulate their own gambling. Based on this case law, the German State Treaty on Gambling Regulation is admissible.

Online gamblers in Germany, therefore, continue to have a good chance of recovering at least some of their stakes, regardless of their size. Have you also made payments to illegal online casinos and would like to get your money back? Then let the law firm Lenné advise you in a free initial consultation. We have extensive experience in this field and, in addition to direct debits up to 8 weeks in arrears, we have also been able to recover direct debits that had already been made 13 months earlier for our clients. Among other things, this involved stakes of over 50,000 €.