Pragmatic Play - TopGame rebranding and 6 million USD jackpot scam

In 2008, the developer TopGame appeared, which later turned into Pragmatic Play.
They stubbornly deny this connection and even demanded that information that links these two brands be removed.



TopGame accused of fraud!

In 2009, it was discovered that their progressive jackpot games were set up in such a way that players were unable to hit the top prize and had dumped over 6 million USD into the slots. Specifically, several progressive slots had no wild symbols on reels 1 and 5. The only way to win the jackpot was to get wilds on all five
drums. Due to this, the overall return of slot machines was much lower than stated in the technical specifications.

Top Game acknowledged the absence of wild symbols, but insisted that it was just a mistake. In their opinion, the launched version contained test configurations. The developer announced that deposits would be returned to the victims. However, the statements about the error were received skeptically, and questions arose as to why they would test a slot with such configurations.

Among the misdemeanors, it is also mentioned that TopGame's white label casinos have received a lot of complaints about slow withdrawals or refusals to pay out. Moreover, their progressive jackpots have not been hit even once in the more than 5 years that Casino Listings has been monitoring them.

As a result, when the company rebranded and Pragmatic Play appeared in 2015, the developers simply pocketed the accumulated jackpots totaling more than $6.4 million!

This money essentially belonged to the players, because the savings came from their bets and were not losses. Fraudsters can even take this as a profitable deception scheme.
You develop progressive slots, collect money, close down and take the jackpot.

Pragmatic Play went to great lengths to hide its connection to TopGame. They went so far as to threaten casino forums and sites with legal action for making such claims. In some cases, they asked forum owners to publish statements that refuted any claims that
that the two companies are connected, and to remove posts from the Internet that mention their connection.

We know this because they tried it with us too. However, Casino Listings is not so easily scared and
In the interests of transparency, we provide evidence to support our words.

The owner is the same person - David Barzilay. He is not directly listed as the owner of Pragmatic Play, but is the owner and founder of the company that acquired Pragmatic in 2016.

As one of the confirmations that David Barzilay was directly related to TopGame, a criminal complaint was sent to the chief prosecutor of Romania. In this complaint, the offenders were listed as TG Services Incs (the owner of TopGame), as well as David Barzilay himself, who was the owner and director of the company.

They were accused by the English company TVMUK LIMITED, which owned several casinos that were located on the servers of TG Services. In 2013, TG Services illegally attributed them a debt of 2.5 million dollars and
demanded immediate payment of 1.4 million. At the same time, they blocked TVMUK LIMITED's access to their sites and threatened to transfer the casino to other operators if the money was not paid. They are also accused of creating and managing copies of TVMUK LIMITED casino sites.
Casino Listings also found that one of TopGame's directors, Yair Hamami, immediately moved to Pragmatic Play. And some Pragmatic Play employees indicated in their profiles that they had been working for the company since 2013, despite the fact that the company was founded in 2015. Some casino management also noted that they were working with the same people in both companies. This all suggests that nothing has actually changed except the name.

In the documents, known as theParadise Papers, Casino Listings also found that TG Services is the owner of Pragmatic Play shares. The Paradise Papers were a controversial leak of information that occurred in 2017. It is considered the second largest after the Panama Papers leak in 2016, which resulted in
which revealed the financial connections of the Queen of Great Britain, Prince Charles, the President of Colombia and other famous people.