We had a report last week from a U.S. online gambler who, like so many, made use of NETELLER back in the mid 2000s when the EFT payment processor had a significant share of the online gambling market. Then, the UIGEA was passed in 2006 and almost immediately, NETELLER made an exit from the U.S. market. They paid back players after a delay of several months under an Approved Distribution Plan in conjunction with the U.S. authorities. Once the payout process was initiated, NETELLER reported that U.S. members would not be able to request funds after January 26, 2008. However, a final notice was sent out in July of last year.

This former NETELLER user received a call that said he had money still in his NETELLER account. He was unaware of any funds, but also never cashed out of his old NETELLER account. This former account holder said the he was required to send in some proof of ID and fill out a few forms to get his money. This player did extra due diligence, calling back the number provided and verifying that it was a NETELLER number. He did send in the required information as this all seemed very legitimate. But after a couple of weeks and no check, he contacted us here at OSGA.

We checked with NETELLER and today they confirmed our suspicions.

NETELLER management got back to us via email, indicating that this player and others may be the victims of a scam. “All former NETELLER account holders in the US have been contacted by NETELLER as part of the Approved Distribution Plan for residual account balances. A final notice was issued by email to registered email addresses on 15 – 16 July with the final acceptance date for receipt of withdrawal requests being 26 July 2009. Other than for requests already received and/or being processed, any contact after this date would not originate from NETELLER.”

This feels an awful lot like an identity theft scam. The alarming thing is that we know 100% that the payment processor is not paying out any more to U.S. customers, nor are the contacting any former U.S. customers.

If you get a call looking to ‘help you’ recover funds that were in NETELLER. Beware!! Do not give the callers any personal information and contact NETELLER at complaints@neteller.com. If you believe that you may have already fallen victim to this scam, please notify us so that we can continue to warn other potential targets.