A Canadian blackjack player known only as John has few good things to say about online gambling site PlayNow. The site is operated by the British Columbia Lottery Commission (BCLC), and is the first official online casino ever launched in Canada.

Shortly after the site was launched last week, it went offline. The official word at the time was that the site was unable to cope with the incredible inrush of new players. Later, however, the truth came to light: a technical glitch saw the personal and financial data of more than 200 players compromised, so the site was shut down while the problem was fixed.

The fact that the BCLC lied to the public about why the site went down was bad enough, but John has more to be frustrated about. He was in the middle of a $200 online blackjack hand when the site went down. It turns out that his account was one of the 200 that was compromised, so at that moment, another player had access to his funds. The BCLC said they will keep an eye on his account for the next year to make sure everything is OK, but John says the monitoring has not started yet, and it’s been almost a week since the incident.

“The fact that it’s taken this long somewhat defeats the point. If information were to be exploited by a third party with malicious intentions, it would have happened fairly quickly,” John said.

PlayNow is still offline, but John isn’t worried. He says he won’t be rushing back to continue playing there. This first attempt at a legal online gambling site in Canada has definitely not made a good impression on players.