The scam worrying Australia: they pretended to be major casinos to lure players to sites

A sophisticated scam alerted the Australian betting market. An international organization used the brands of some of the country’s most well-known casinos and lotteries to attract players to illegal platforms.

Among the impersonated companies are Crown Melbourne, The Star Sydney, The Lott, and Mindil Beach Casino Resort, as well as brands linked to lotteries like Powerball. The mechanism started with paid ads posted on Facebook and Instagram that appeared to promote official apps.

The ads led to pages that mimicked the look of the Apple App Store or Google Play. However, the supposed download button did not install an official app: it downloaded a progressive web app, a kind of shortcut that took the user to an offshore online casino.

Push notifications that were difficult to disable could even be activated, according to an investigation by NordVPN’s threat intelligence unit.

The scheme was organized in three levels. At the top was an advertising tool that could be rented; then there was a network of more than 1,000 affiliates responsible for generating fake campaigns, and finally the illegal casinos, which paid a commission for each player who reached their platforms.

The most worrying part is that the casinos to which users were directed accepted real deposits and real money, but were not regulated in Australia. Therefore, they did not necessarily have mandatory controls such as age verification, deposit limits, or player protection measures that authorized operators must comply with.

How they managed to deceive platforms and casinos

The investigation also found that those responsible exploited Meta’s advertising tools to hide the true destination of the ads.

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The system could show an almost blank page to the automated mechanisms responsible for reviewing the advertising, while a person clicking would receive the fake page with the appearance of an official store.

In this way, the criminals managed to evade controls and use recognized brand names to generate trust.

The Star and The Lott have already acknowledged being aware of the problem and assured that they implemented brand protection tools to detect and report fraudulent ads. The Lott also recommended its customers to use only its official channels.

The investigation came to light at a time when Australia is maintaining a strong offensive against illegal online gambling. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) claims to have blocked or removed nearly 1,800 illegal betting sites in the last seven years.

The problem is that many of them reappear quickly using new domains, making their definitive removal difficult.

The service used by the scammers, in fact, closed after the investigation exposed its operation. In a message posted on its site, it stated that some clients had used its tools to carry out aggressive campaigns and impersonate brands, in violation of its own rules.

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