New affiliate software. Payments diverted to unknown bitcoin address?

[CL-Ed]

We have not sent this program any referrals for a few years after we busted them stealing a progressive jackpot from players. However we still have an old account that earns a small amount of money some months, though in recent months somehow spiked to earn a fair bit more. Their reports seem to show they haven't paid us since 2019 (though we are not sure whether this is just a limitation of their shit reporting system as opposed to non payment) so we were chasing that up. I went into their affiliate site to check and found that they have a new affiliate system running on MyAffiliates as opposed to the old system which is still running concurrently.

I couldn't login to the new MyAffiliates system using old login details so had to do a password reset to get in. When I did I found there was essentially nothing tracked on there compared to the old system (everything was 0 while the old system has commission numbers). Judging by the reporting periods it seems to have been running since April 2021, but we've never been informed about it.

In the old system we have bank account details for payment via wire transfer. I wondered if maybe they weren't in the new system, or perhaps the new system had a record of more recent payments than 2019. That's when I find our payment preference in the new system has been set to a Bitcoin address that does not belong to us.

Now I do not know whether they have been paying to this address or not as there are no payment records or stats in the new system at all. I can see that the mystery Bitcoin address has been involved in 6 transactions on the blockchain (3 in / 3 out) and subsequently had the funds moved elsewhere.

Correction: I do know they have been paying there for the last 3 months, and who knows if there was a different address for months prior to that. It seems likely.

I want to reiterate that this is an account that we have never logged in to before today. In case you're wondering about our password security/hygiene - we used machine generated 20-30 character long, effectively uncrackable passwords that are different for all affiliate accounts. Of course when they migrate to a new system and assign new passwords who knows what quality of password was set for the new account before we reset it. And there is also the possibility that it is an insider messing with accounts.

So if you are still referring people to this program you might want to double check your payment preferences because in our case they appear to be compromised without our passwords being stolen or hacked.

 

[CL-Ed]

I might add that we have emailed them several times since 2019 trying to resolve the payments issue but they never respond.

 

[CL-Ed]

Ok after cross referencing amounts on the blockchain associated with the bogus bitcoin address with historical exchange rates I am convinced that we have had our affiliate commissions stolen from this program, and I am 99.9% sure it is by someone working there.

During the process of recovering access to this new MyAffiliates account that we never knew about before, the email address on the account was still the same as the old system. Yet we never received any email about the new account, nor any alerts about change of password or change of payment details. Today when I reset and changed passwords, we were immediately alerted to all these things via email.

I know all this:
1. Our email has not been hacked. It has a strong machine generated password that is rotated from time to time + 2 factor authentication required to access it, and has been like that for many years.
2. We were somehow not notified of the implementation of the new MyAffiliates system by Genesys.
3. Our email address on the new account has not been changed from the old account.
4. Whatever password was assigned to the new account was different to the password in the old system (I tried and it failed) and it never changed otherwise we would have received an email alert.
5. Changing payment details or email address on the new system requires knowledge of the account password. Seeing as though we never knew what it was, the only ones who could have known were those working there, or someone able to change the database without going through the web app.
6. I changed the payment details earlier today to say "Contact us immediately. Previous BTC address - xxxx - does not belong to us.". That message was then flagged in their system as requiring approval. It is now not flagged, indicating it has been approved yet no-one has contacted us.

Conclusion: this is an inside job. Someone at Genesys is stealing commissions from accounts they either think are dormant or, perhaps in our case, they simply don't like due to things we have revealed about them in the past.

If anyone has contact details for someone there who will actually reply it would be much appreciated because if we are continued to be ignored and these amounts are not repaid we will be taking this much further.

 

[KasinoKing]

I couldn't login to the new MyAffiliates system using old login details so had to do a password reset to get in. When I did I found there was essentially nothing tracked on there compared to the old system (everything was 0 while the old system has commission numbers). Judging by the reporting periods it seems to have been running since April 2021, but we've never been informed about it.

They were going to switch everything to the new system - but for some reason they couldn't do it, so they carried on running both. This was from April 2020, not 2021.
Only new players signed up from new system links will show on their reports, while old existing players are still on the old reporting system.

I haven't been paid for a year now - though my earnings are also very small (less than $1,000 due)

I haven't contacted them for at least a year, but the guys who did used to reply were:
Julian: julian@genesysaffiliates.com
Colin Anderson: colin@playerserv.com

Hope that helps,
KK

 

[CL-Ed]

Thanks. Julian is one who has ignored every email we've sent over the past few years, even if we replied to emails he sent us, so as far as I am concerned he is prime suspect #1.

It is just bizarre that they have 2 systems running, we're accumulating money in 1 system with bank wire instructions, yet they pay out using instructions in a different system to which we have never logged in, never sent a click, and never earned a cent.

I suppose I should not be surprised given their past conduct but this sort of theft is particularly brazen.

 

[bonustreak]

I can never log in to this program and 2 separate systems is very annoying!

 

[Frank]

affiliate accounts hacked is pretty common, though the best programs will usually check with you directly when you change the payment address

 

[CL-Ed]

Indeed. My tests on their new system have confirmed that you get an email notification if you change an account password but not if you change payment instructions. That is interesting / alarming / negligent.