Mafia Casino

Mafia Casino Review

As much as we don’t like to admit it, the history of gambling is intrinsically tied to the mafia – hell, Las Vegas as we know it was literally created by a mobster as a means of laundering money for the New York mafia! Of course, since then Vegas (and gambling in general) has moved on from these dark roots, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge them from time to time, even if in a tongue in cheek way.

Enter Mafia Casino, the latest offering by NovaForge – one of the biggest casino companies in the world, with dozens (if not hundreds) of unique brands under their name. We’ve always paid very special attention to NovaForge here at CasinoAustraliaOnline, as their sites always have a dedicated Australian version, complete with support for the Australian dollar. But that doesn’t make them automatically good, which is why we must investigate them thoroughly to determine their quality, or lack thereof!

So, does Mafia Casino deserve to be a made man, or should it be sleeping with the fishes?

Bonuses

Welcome Bonus – 100% Match up to AU$750 + 200 Free Spins + 1 Bonus Crab

The welcome bonus is one of the most important aspects of any online casino – that’s what will get a good chunk of players to sign up, after all! That’s why so many sites will award you extravagant bonuses, often with multiple parts and/or with a special offer for high rollers. Mafia Casino keeps things very simple, and although in doing so it’ll alienate the aforementioned high rollers, regular players should be satisfied with this offer.

Specifically, players who deposit at least AU$30 will receive a 100% match up to AU$750, alongside 200 free spins (and one spin on the game “Bonus Crab” which is exclusive to NovaForge casinos). Again, this won’t be anywhere near enough for the people who are used to huge bonuses of up to thousands upon thousands of dollars, but those who weren’t planning to deposit much more than AU$30 will be pretty happy with the generous amount of free spins.

Of course, no bonus is ever just free money, even if the casino says otherwise! In this case, you’ll need to complete some hefty wagering requirements to claim the cash as your own. The match bonus must be played through x35 times within 10 days, and the free spins – x40 times within the same amount of time. Worth noting that each batch of free spins must be played through separately, as you’ll receive them daily over 10 consecutive days (20 per day).

Reload Promotions at Mafia Casino

But the welcome bonus is only one part of the equation. Sure, it might be enough to get people to sign up, but since it’s a one-time only bonus, it certainly won’t keep anyone there for the long haul! You need additional promotions for that, ones that can be used by existing players. And although Mafia Casino doesn’t have a ton of those, it still has enough to be worth a look.

The main attractions here are the two reload promotions which, as their name suggests, will reload at regular intervals, allowing you to claim each of them once a week. The first such promotion will be available between Monday and Thursday, and will net you 50 free spins against a deposit of AU$30. The second, available over the weekend, will instead give you a 50% match up to AU$1,050, but if you bump up your deposit to at least AU$75, you’ll also receive 50 additional free spins. This means that taking advantage of both bonuses will net you 100 free spins and AU$37 for a deposit of AU$105.

It’s worth noting that these aren’t the only promotions available here, but the rest are mostly tied to the tournaments and VIP program which we’ll discuss further on in our review. As for the wagering requirements, they’re the same as those for the welcome bonus: x35 for the match bonus and x40 for the free spins winnings. You’ll still have 10 days to complete them, but this time the free spins will be given to you all at once instead of in batches.

Games

Bonuses are nice and all, but nobody joins an online casino just to get them – they join to play pokies and table games, right? Many casino sites make the mistake of overpromising on bonuses and underdelivering on games, but we assure you, Mafia isn’t among them. Its collection of games is genuinely one of its best qualities, doubly so because of how expansive it is compared to other Australian sites.

As you may know if you’re a long-time reader of CasinoAustraliaOnline (or simply following the industry yourself), since many game providers block their games from being played by Aussies, casinos that operate here often have significantly limited libraries. Mafia does too – but that still hasn’t let it stop it from having well over 3,000 pokies, hundreds of live dealer rooms, and dozens of instant win games. It even has a sports section, which is always great to see!

Pokies

As mentioned, the pokies section of Mafia Casino is one of its best qualities, to the point where we’re confident in saying that any fan of spinning reels and matching symbols is going to be more than happy! Many Australian casinos make up for the loss of high-quality providers like NetEnt by stuffing their libraries with whatever low-quality games they can find, and although we feel like Mafia has its fair share of ‘filler’ content, that hasn’t stopped it from showcasing some top of the line games.

We’re talking about the offerings of providers like BGaming, Pragmatic Play, Booming Games, Yggdrasil, Play’N GO, and so many more famous companies! Unfortunately, the one downside we can point out is that the categorization of Mafia Casino isn’t very good, and the site clearly expects you to already be familiar with a lot of these games before you start playing. If you’re a complete newbie, we can see how the experience will be a bit tougher for you.

Live casino

Despite the fact that pokies have always been the main attraction of any online casino (as indicated by their colossal numbers), not every player will want to play those. Many would prefer to enjoy other games, like roulette, blackjack, or baccarat. And although the live dealer section offering these games isn’t quite as expansive here as the pokies one, we’re happy to say that Mafia Casino excels with it as well.

The main provider whose rooms you’d enjoy is Pragmatic Live, which is great news for fans of more obscure titles like sic bo, hi lo or andar bahar. Those types of games may not be as numerous as blackjack or roulette, but they’re still very present here – alongside the live game shows like Megaball which are Pragmatic’s specialty. And if for whatever reason you aren’t a fan of Pragmatic’s rooms, you can still use alternatives like Atmosfera. Their games are less numerous, but are present nonetheless.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Us Aussies have the worst luck when it comes to online casinos! Governments that don’t understand gambling and pass awful legislation, companies that don’t want anything to do with us and make their games unavailable, and worst of all, there’s the payment methods! Sadly, a lot of the payment options that are commonly used in online casinos aren’t too widely spread in the land down under, which can often leave us out to dry.

Mafia Casino, thankfully, doesn’t fall into that pitfall, as it provides plenty of different payment types. The most common method we assume most players would use is MasterCard, as sadly Visa isn’t available to Aussies (at least not for deposits – you can use it for withdrawals. Beyond that, you’ll be able to use a lot of e-wallets, like Neteller or Jeton, as well as a few prepaid vouchers like Neosurf.

The final payment type is – what else – crypto! Mafia Casino will let you deposit with all the popular alternative currencies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether, but it also supports a few of the more obscure choices like Ripple and BitcoinCash. Although there are a few notable omissions, like Solana or Tron, we frankly don’t feel like their absence is a huge issue.

Withdrawal time

Were you able to finally score that big win you’ve been dreaming about? Awesome! Time to set the table and invite all your best mates to celebrate… right? Not so fast! It’ll actually take at least 3 days before the money arrives in your pocket. That’s how long it’ll take for Mafia Casino to process your transaction, make sure you haven’t cheated, and finally send the money your way.

In fact, if you withdraw using certain payment methods, the final wait time could be even longer! Sure, withdrawing with e-wallets like Neteller or faster cryptos like Litecoin will be instant (well, at least after Mafia Casino dispatches it), but using a slower crypto like Bitcoin and Dogecoin can add a few hours of wait time to the total! What’s more, if you use a credit card (like Visa or MasterCard) you’ll add 3-5 extra days, and a bank transfer can increase that wait time to nearly 2 weeks! Unfortunately, banks tend to be quite slow when processing these sorts of transactions.

VIP Program

As mentioned already in our overview of Mafia Casino’s bonuses (which you should totally read if you haven’t already), a good chunk of the promos aimed at loyal players are tied to the VIP program. So, if you want to claim things like a cashback, or higher withdrawal limits, you’ll first need to reach the appropriate VIP level.

At first glance, this makes perfect sense – why shouldn’t the most loyal and dedicated punters be rewarded in this way, right? Unfortunately, once you examine the program closer, you realize that the only people who’d get rewarded are the rich high rollers who deposit tens of thousands of dollars. The program has 5 levels total and only starts giving you the most basic of perks at level 3, and take it from us, the road from level 0 to level 3 is a long one.

This wouldn’t be so bad if Mafia only concealed some superfluous nonsense behind the VIP program, like the cashback feature – like, yeah, it’s cool to have, but it’s hardly essential, right? But no, you’ll see some actually quite necessary things like improved customer support hidden behind this sham of a “loyalty program”. Why must I increase my VIP level to get good customer support?!

Tournaments

Although the VIP section of Mafia was a complete disappointment, the tournaments are more of a mixed bag. The good news is that there are actually quite a few of them, and they’re quite different from each other! You’ll find weekly races, monthly races, drops & wins promos, even occasionally some live casino and sports betting tournaments! The latter two types aren’t nearly as common as the pokie tourneys, but the fact that they can be found here at all is a testament to how great this feature is… or at least, how great it could have been.

The bad news is that most of these promos won’t give you any money at all. Sure, the drops & wins promotions (and, occasionally, the live casino and sports betting tournaments too) will give you cold, hard cash if you manage to score high enough. But anything that has to do with pokies will just give you some currency that you can use to buy bonuses from Mafia Casino’s shop. Yeah, these bonuses can be played through and eventually converted into money if you complete the wagering requirements, but the fact that you need to go through this extra effort after you won is a little insulting.

Verification

Remember earlier how we spoke about Las Vegas being created by the New York mafia for the purposes of money laundering? Although the gambling industry has changed a lot since those days, the mafia has not, and criminals to this day try to use casinos for money laundering. Which is bad news for regular players like you who are just trying to have fun! To deter the bad guys, casinos like Mafia have implemented various security measures that make money laundering much more difficult.

The biggest and most widely used among them is verification, also known as KYC (Know Your Customer). This will see each player connecting their real identity to their casino account by presenting some identifying documents – ID card, passport, driver’s license, that sort of thing. NovaForge (the company behind Mafia Casino) has a very streamlined and intuitive verification process spearheaded by a KYC specialist, so there’s no reason to be concerned. It’s minimally invasive, lasts just a few minutes, and you only need to go through it once!

Is Mafia Casino Legit & safe?

Many casino review sites will tell you that there’s no reason to be concerned about your safety while playing online – if a casino site looks legit, it probably is! Well, we’ve never abided by that philosophy. We at CasinoAustraliaOnline believe that players should learn how to examine the evidence and make up their own minds on whether they feel comfortable playing at a particular site. So, let’s examine Mafia Casino and see where the evidence stands there.

You can determine a casino’s legitimacy through two distinct factors: its owner and its license. In terms of owner, Mafia Casino is owned by NovaForge Ltd, an incredibly prominent online casino company that already has dozens of other sites under its belt. Logically, if they scam you, and then you start filing disputes and posting publicly about it, that’s going to impact the company’s reputation across multiple different sites, not just Mafia. Furthermore, it could lead to their license being revoked. Currently, the company is licensed to operate by Anjouan Gaming, who is making sure they’re treating their players fairly. As such, not only do they pass the second factor we mentioned, but also, losing that license could lead to a lot of complications for them.

Customer support

So, what happens when you’re experiencing an issue at Mafia and need some assistance? Sure, we’ve given players plenty of advice over here, but that doesn’t mean our review is all-encompassing! Sometimes, you need to ask straight from the source, and luckily, this site lets you do so in two distinct ways: via live chat and email. And, after testing both, we can easily confirm that email support is by far the best.

Live chat’s responses were not only extremely slow (often taking up to 15 minutes), but they also didn’t provide us with a lot of information. We had to ask multiple follow-up questions, which led to even bigger delays. What’s the point? Send an email – you might wait a few hours to receive a reply, but at least you know that reply will contain all the details you need without that annoying, time-consuming back and forth!

Mobile casino

Finally, we have to bring up the mobile version of Mafia, which is (rather unsurprisingly) also its main one. Even if you visit the site on desktop, you’ll still encounter a lot of design elements that are very similar to how a mobile website would work (for example, a foldable menu). The upside here is that if you’re someone who has switched from the desktop site to the mobile one, or vice versa, the new version will be extremely easy to navigate.

We’re placing emphasis on the words “mobile site” here, as Mafia doesn’t have an app that you can download and install. You can only access the mobile version through your mobile browser, though you can install a shortcut to it to your home screen for easier access. Despite this, you’ll still be able to use all the site’s features (like banking or bonuses) without any slowdown or issues.