This was a scam and they're not coming back to give you back your money. You could see it brewing by the amount of promo events they were making, sponsoring everything that was happening on the forum like bitcointalk awards, pizza baking competition and all that. They had their fingers in every pie. They had a signature campaign with good rates, their logos and art pieces all around the forum, gave away hardware wallets with their logos for free...
Usually when this happens you get that voice in the back of your head that they're wasting to much money to build a brand and at the same time another voice tells you that maybe they have a lot of money to spend and are serious about their business. We don't want this to be a scam so we try not to think about it and keep going, like when the car starts overheating and you keep driving thinking "maybe I can make it home and then I'll fix it."
unfortunately I must agree with you, 10 years ago when PTC (paid to click) sites were very popular on the internet, many scammers started to create many PTC sites and they had a very common form that made it easier to identify them, which was a lot of promotions and a lot of bonuses, so when people saw a ptc site with a lot of promotions and a lot of bonuses, then people already knew that it was a ptc scam site. Of course, there were other scammers who were much smarter and managed to do things so that people couldn't discover earlier that their website was a scam. By this I mean that this also happens with casinos, for example for a new casino that appears offering a 1000X bonus with few wagering requirements and places a deposit of $10,000 as the minimum amount to be eligible for the bonus.
Looking at this red flag and other red flags that will be in the new casino, then experienced people in the world of gambling will know that they are facing a casino scam. But when the casino has already been on this forum for many months, it becomes more difficult to observe the signs that it is going to become a scam, mainly because the casino representative hires a good campaign manager, keeps making promotions and fulfills when someone wins, does not delay payment. So he creates a scenario in which everyone looks at him and trusts him.
just see that even when the OP of this casino disappeared, people were still waiting for him to come back, a week with the website written that it was under maintenance, and people were still hoping, two weeks with the website under maintenance and the casino representative really disappeared So no one accused the casino of being a scam, because since the casino had been operating for so long, people started to trust them blindly.