Online Casino Fraud Schemes

The online casino is a worldwide phenomenon, with exponential growth over the past few years. With this comes an increasing rate of criminals, ready to illegally win and get rich. Even regular casinos have these kinds of people and it is not shocking that they exist even online.

The means to this are as numerous and varied as the criminals that exist. Most use software programs called ‘bots’. These pretend to be casino players and using the predicted odds by the writer, win on specific casino games.

The bots that are well-known are really good variations of another casino scam which has been adapted for online casinos. These bots are pre-programmed to use money which has been obtained via other illegal activities e.g. stolen credit cards. Once the money is gotten, the bots launder it through online casinos. It is a much easier and less visible way for the fraudsters. All the bots do is transfer winnings to a specific person. After this, other players in the scheme flood the playing room and signal the particular player as being fraudulent.

The other well-known scam is one which uses spam email to get account details of a player. The details are usually just the login name and password. Once scammers have this information, they use it to launder money in the manner explained.

These criminals cost the casinos a lot of money every year, estimated at $3m. Fulltilpoker.com comes to mind as the most recent victim to this. After the site was robbed by a bot, the casino has had to compensate those who have been defrauded. Online casinos have no option but to tighten their security systems and re-develop the software running their casino games. This is the only way players’ confidence can be gained and maintained.

Players on their part should not give out personal information about their accounts. For as long as online casinos exist, fraud schemes will be there.