You registered with GamStop to make gambling stop, and a casino still took your deposit and your losses. It happens because GamStop only binds operators licensed by the Gambling Commission, so what you do next depends entirely on which licence the casino held when you played. Check that first: if it was UK-licensed, put your GamStop registration in writing to the operator and escalate to IBAS free of charge if unresolved after 8 weeks; if it was offshore, the same record still counts as evidence but the route runs through the operator’s own complaints process instead. The table below sets out both paths, and the sections that follow take each in turn.
| Cause | How to tell | What to do | How long it takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK-licensed operator’s GamStop check failed at signup | Site shows a Gambling Commission licence number; you had already registered with GamStop | Complain in writing to the operator, citing your GamStop registration date | Operator should respond; escalate to IBAS if unresolved after 8 weeks |
| An existing self-exclusion lapsed or was reversed early | You had excluded directly with that brand, then logged back in with no re-verification step | Ask the operator in writing why the exclusion did not hold, with dates | Same 8-week complaint window, then IBAS |
| Marketing kept arriving after you excluded | Promotional emails or texts continued after your GamStop or self-exclusion date | Keep the messages as evidence and add them to your written complaint | Included in the same complaint timeline |
| The site was licensed offshore, for example in Curaçao, and never bound by GamStop | No Gambling Commission licence shown; a Curaçao or other non-UK licence displayed instead | Use the operator’s internal complaints procedure, then its CGA-certified ADR provider if unresolved | Up to 6 months to complain, then around 90 days for ADR |
| You are not sure which licence applied | No licence number is visible, or you cannot find one on the register | Check the licence yourself before doing anything else | A few minutes with our licence checker |
If the casino turns out to have been licensed offshore, our Curaçao refunds service sets out that complaints route, and a free eligibility check tells you where your own case stands.
Need support now? Free, confidential help is available 24/7. Call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, chat to GamCare (gamcare.org.uk), self-exclude from UK-licensed gambling with GAMSTOP (gamstop.co.uk), and block gambling sites for free with BetBlocker (betblocker.org). You can also speak to your GP.
The single question that decides everything
People come to us describing the same experience in almost the same words. They self-excluded, they thought the door was shut, and then they found themselves logged in and losing again. The feeling is identical whether the site was British or offshore. The legal position is not. So before anything else, work out which of two situations you are in, because they lead to different routes and different prospects.
Case one: a UK-licensed operator, regulated by the Gambling Commission, let you bet despite your GamStop registration. Case two: an offshore site, never bound by GamStop in the first place, took your money. The rest of this guide takes each in turn. If you are not sure which applies to you, that is normal, and it is one of the first things we establish on a free eligibility check.
Why GamStop should have stopped you at all
GamStop is the national online self-exclusion scheme for Great Britain, run by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited, a not-for-profit. One registration is meant to exclude you from every operator licensed by the Gambling Commission, rather than asking you to shut each account by hand. When you register you choose a minimum period of 6 months, 1 year or 5 years, and it cannot be lifted before that period ends. Even then it does not lift on its own: you have to contact GamStop, and a 24-hour cooling-off period applies before any removal takes effect.
The part that matters for a claim is the operator’s side. Since 31 March 2020, taking part in GamStop has been a mandatory condition of holding a remote operating licence in Great Britain. That requirement sits in the Gambling Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice, at social responsibility code provision 3.5.5, which states that licensees must participate in the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme. A licensed operator does not get to treat your registration as advisory. Its systems are supposed to check the GamStop database and block you. When they do not, the failure is the operator’s, not yours.
Case one: a UK-licensed casino let you bet anyway
This is the clearer of the two. You were registered with GamStop, and a Commission-licensed site still let you open or use an account and deposit. If that is what happened, a control the operator was required by its licence to have in place did not work. That is a breach, and a breach can sit at the heart of a recovery claim.
It helps to be precise about what went wrong, because the precise failure is what a claim is built on. A licensed operator is expected to take account of self-exclusions made through the multi-operator scheme, take reasonable steps to prevent a self-excluded person from opening or using an account, return funds held in a customer account where required, and stop sending marketing to them. So the breach might be that you registered with GamStop and the operator’s system never blocked the new account. It might be that you self-excluded directly with that brand earlier, then were quietly allowed back. It might be that the block worked at first and then lapsed, or that you kept receiving promotional emails after you had excluded, which is a failure in its own right and useful evidence of one. Each of these is a different fault in the same duty.
None of this means a refund is automatic. There is no blanket entitlement, and outcomes turn on the facts and the evidence, so the honest framing is that you may be able to recover losses where an operator breached its duties, and no outcome is promised. What the law requires of an operator when self-exclusion fails, and how a breach claim is actually argued, is set out in our guide to self-exclusion failures by the operator. The practical question of how those losses are recovered, including the free routes you can use yourself, is covered separately in claiming a refund after self-excluding, so this page does not repeat it.
What to do first in the UK-licensed case
You do not need a claims company to begin. For a UK-licensed operator there is a route that costs you nothing. Put a complaint to the operator in writing, state clearly that you were registered with GamStop at the time, and ask for a written response. If it is unresolved after 8 weeks, or you receive a final or deadlock response sooner, you can take the dispute to a Gambling-Commission-approved Alternative Dispute Resolution provider such as IBAS, the Independent Betting Adjudication Service, at no cost to you. The wider walk-through, and where a specialist adds value when a case is tangled, sits in our guide to recovering gambling losses in the UK.
Case two: the site was never on GamStop
The second case feels the same and works differently. GamStop binds only operators licensed by the Gambling Commission. A casino licensed solely offshore, for example in Curaçao, sits outside the scheme entirely, so your registration did nothing to block it. There was no British licence condition for it to breach by letting you in, because it never held one. People who self-exclude sometimes drift to these sites without realising they fall outside the usual UK consumer protections, and the marketing around them is built to catch exactly that moment.
This is the part many readers get wrong, and it matters, so be clear about it. The fact that an offshore site let you bet after GamStop is not, by itself, a breach of GamStop, because GamStop never reached that site. An offshore licence is far lighter than a UK Gambling Commission one. There is no GamStop integration, no UK ADR route such as IBAS, and no UK regulator you can turn to for that operator. None of that makes the offshore casino safe. It makes the protections thinner and the route different.
Where the site that let you through traded on a Curaçao licence, one practical avenue exists even though GamStop never reached it. That licence now obliges the operator to run a genuine complaints procedure and to name an independent dispute provider its regulator has certified, and the deposits it took during your exclusion, together with your dated registration, form the record any approach to either would rest on. Recovering Curaçao casino deposits walks that path from the first letter onwards.
Why your self-exclusion history still matters offshore
Here is the point people miss when they assume an offshore loss is simply gone. Your GamStop registration is not the basis of an offshore claim, but it is still evidence, and it can be powerful evidence. It establishes something a court or a legal partner cares about: that you had taken a formal, dated step to stop gambling, and that you were a person in a recognised state of harm at the time you were allowed to deposit and lose.
Where the money went also reshapes the route. Offshore losses often move by bank transfer or in cryptocurrency rather than on a card, and recovery there is framed as a claim arising from the operator’s conduct, not as a request to reverse a card payment or a bank transfer. The questions a case turns on are whether the operator breached duties it owed, what it knew or should have known about your circumstances, and how the funds left your control. Your self-exclusion record, your account history, and the pattern of deposits all feed that picture. It is a harder route than the UK one, and it does not always succeed, but it is not automatically a dead end. We set out the broader position on offshore and non-GamStop sites in our guide to recovering gambling losses.
How to tell which case you are in
The dividing line is the licence the site held when you played, not the website’s name or how British it looked. Some offshore brands present themselves in ways that read as UK-facing. The reliable test is the licence. A UK-licensed operator displays a Gambling Commission licence and account number, and you can check it on the Commission’s public register. If the site was licensed only offshore, or showed a Curaçao or other non-UK licence, or the fact that it accepted you after GamStop was itself the giveaway, you are likely in case two. If you cannot tell, that is a normal place to be, and confirming which licence applied to your losses is one of the first things we do. See the licence-type breakdown below for what each licence means for a claim.
Self-exclusion is a promise the system makes to you. When a UK-licensed operator breaks it, the failure is theirs. When an offshore site exploits it, your record of trying to stop still counts.
Build your record either way
Whichever case fits, the same evidence carries it, and it is worth gathering now while it is available. Keep your GamStop registration confirmation, with the date and the period you chose, because it fixes the moment you formally tried to stop. Save account statements and transaction records showing when you deposited and what you lost. Keep any emails or marketing the operator sent after you self-excluded. Note the site’s name and the dates, and check, where you can, whether it held a Gambling Commission licence at the time. Your payment records matter here as proof of what happened and when, not as a route to pursue in themselves.
Where Clinton & Co fits
You can pursue the UK routes above on your own, and many people do. Where a case is more tangled, where the losses sat with an offshore operator, or where you simply cannot face handling it alone, the picture is harder to read. That is the work we do. We look at which operator the losses sat with, which licence it held when you played, what protections applied to your situation, and whether the controls that should have been in place were. The initial check is free and confidential. Where a case proceeds, our regulated legal partners typically work on a no win, no fee basis, so you pay an agreed percentage only from funds that are actually recovered, and no outcome is promised.
If the immediate need is support rather than redress, start there and come back to the claim later. When you are ready, a free eligibility check will tell you which case you are in and where a claim stands.
If gambling is causing you harm, free and confidential help is available now. Call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 or chat to GamCare (gamcare.org.uk). To block gambling sites across your devices, BetBlocker (betblocker.org) is free.
If the casino that let you through was licensed in Great Britain, the remedy is more structured than most people expect, and if it was not, the case is built differently rather than abandoned. Both paths, and the honest limits of each, are set out in the money-back routes after gambling on GamStop.
Sources
- Gambling Commission, LCCP social responsibility code provision 3.5.5, participation in the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, mandatory for online operators from 31 March 2020 (gamblingcommission.gov.uk).
- Gambling Commission, self-exclusion and taking an unresolved complaint to an approved Alternative Dispute Resolution provider (gamblingcommission.gov.uk).
- GamStop, what GamStop is, exclusion periods and the removal process (gamstop.co.uk).
- IBAS, the Independent Betting Adjudication Service, free dispute resolution for customers of UK-licensed operators (ibas-uk.com).
- Curacao Gaming Authority, online licence holders must run an internal complaints procedure (up to 6 months to complain) then refer an unresolved complaint to a CGA-certified ADR provider (free to the player, around 90 days) (cga.cw, read 5 September 2026).
General information, not legal advice. We are not solicitors or a law firm. We connect clients with regulated legal partners.