Must Read Media Reveals Santeda's Dark Casino Empire

[Nate]

Fake Boss, Real Harm: The Guardian Catches Up With Santeda​

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We've had the Santeda International warning thread running for some time. Players have been walking into these casinos and walking out considerably poorer, with nobody on the other end of the phone and no regulator with the reach to help. Now

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, and it's worse than it looked from the complaints alone.

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The Network​

Santeda International BV is registered in Curaçao and holds the license for at least eight casino brands operating in the UK without a UKGC license. MyStake, Velobet, Goldenbet, and Rolletto are among them. Between November 2025 and January 2026, those sites collectively drew an average of 2.3 million unique monthly visitors from the UK, according to web traffic firm Similarweb. That is not a fringe operation.

None of them is licensed to serve UK customers. None of them is required to check GamStop. Most of them are explicitly promoted to self-excluded players through affiliate sites built around search phrases like "not on GamStop."

One UK player, identified as Margaret, followed that route in. She deposited around £29,000, won £15,000, withdrew about £6,000, then ran into the usual wall of delays and identity verification demands she had never faced before. The frustration wore her down. She put her winnings back into the games and lost everything, finishing £23,000 down.

The Man Who Does Not Exist​

MyStake is led by CEO Andres Markou. Photogenic, award-winning, pictured shaking hands with Ronaldinho over a branding partnership. The Guardian and deepfake detection platform Reality Defender assessed those photos as highly likely to be AI-generated or manipulated.

A source close to Ronaldinho confirmed the meeting never happened. Leeds United confirmed they had no partnership with MyStake. Markou's name appears in no corporate filings connected to Santeda.

He is a decoy. Someone constructed him to put a face on an operation that does not want one.

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The People Who Do Exist​

The corporate trail runs from Curaçao to Switzerland to Georgia. Upgaming AG, a Swiss-registered company with offices in Switzerland, Georgia, and elsewhere, provided the software underpinning the Santeda casinos. The domain names for multiple Santeda brands, including Velobet, were registered directly by Upgaming or by its CEO, Tornike Tvauri. Tvauri's name also appears on domain records for Affision.com, an affiliate management company used by MyStake and Velobet.

The payments arm of Santeda was originally incorporated as Onyxion. Onyxion Malta, a separate company, is owned by Tvauri. Upgaming's Cypriot accounts list Upgaming as a related party to Onyxion. Their lawyers say any inference of a connection is unfounded. Make of that what you will.

Upgaming's accounts also show the company extended loans of at least €6.5 million to Upco LLC, an entity investing in real estate development in Tbilisi. The new Autograph Mall going up on the edge of Georgia's capital appears to be partially funded by the fees Upgaming earned from its relationship with Santeda.

When the Guardian contacted Upgaming in early March, Upgaming denied any knowledge of an illegal operation. By late March, it had announced the termination of its relationship with Santeda, citing Santeda's "unregulated footprint in restricted jurisdictions." The timing speaks for itself.

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The Cost​

In January 2026, an inquest ruled that unlicensed gambling operators were part of the circumstances that led 36-year-old Ollie Long to take his own life. The Gambling Commission has issued some takedown requests for affiliates and individual domains. As of the investigation's publication, most of the Santeda sites remained fully accessible from the UK.

New powers are expected that would allow the Commission to apply to the court to block IP addresses and domain names. When those powers arrive and how effective they prove to be is an open question.

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Where Things Stand​

The Santeda thread on this forum has been building a record of complaints for a while. The Guardian investigation adds the corporate architecture that explains why the complaints keep coming: these sites were built to be hard to pin down, fronted by a fictional executive, supported by a tech company that has now quietly backed away, and funded in part by the losses of UK players who were specifically targeted after they tried to stop gambling.
We have dedicated warning threads for several of the brands in this network. If you have had problems at any of them, the relevant threads are below:

Santeda International (all brands)
MyStake
Goldenbet
Donbet

Add your experience to the relevant thread.

 

[armster]

This is not surprising really that this happens with unlicensed or low licensed online gambling brands. I played on all their casinos and won what would be considered a significant sum of money using deposit bonuses and while their verification were absolutely ridiculous like having to send a video verification reading stuff written on a piece of paper held in a specific way, they paid me every cent of the 30k or so that i was up with them.

After reading all the horror stories however, I never played there again. Too risky. But im finding even some of the more legit brands are getting pretty shitty with the way they handle things these days.