Nowadays there are many new bookmakers in the online betting industry and majority don’t survive the stiff completion from well-established bookies. Although they’re a good number of legit bookmakers in the market it’s not easy to distinguish them from scammers if you are new to online betting and you can get easily scammed.
Local governments try to regulate bookmakers through licensing and control boards, each country has gambling act under its law that clearly state how a firm should be established and if they fail to comply to the regulations their licensed are revoked.
Common Signs that a Bookmaker is Scamming you
New punters fall for such scammers since majority target new markets and disappear before the alarm is raised. Fraudsters and scammers make a living out of innocent online punters, so how do we identify such people online?
Delays on withdrawals
After winning a bet slip the notification message is sent to your mobile depending on the bookmaker and usually are able to withdraw money within 5 minutes, if there is a delay in getting your payout. Although the bookie may claim that the system is slow, you should rise the red flag if the bookie is persistent with this claim on delays and completely avoid betting with them again.
Unrealistic bonuses or promotions
We all understand that the purpose of a business is to make profits and by giving unrealistic freebies the bookmaker is make more losses than profit. The marketing strategy may work but we will realize that their extravagant bonuses are just scams to trick us into registering and depositing on their platforms.
Changes in terms and conditions
A scammer constantly updates their terms and conditions within short periods of time. They may even not notify you of the change and in the event their new terms are ‘breached’ they will focus on taking you money than warning you and usually they prevent withdrawals or even burn you from their site for no valid reason since they are not playing fair.
Failing to payout your winnings
Such bookies deny punters their winnings in effort to avoid losses they may come up with conspiracy theory to completely keep you from your winnings and will come up with stupid reasons for not paying out.
Poorly regulated by the local government
Not all bookies are register in their part of operations since rules and regulations vary from one country to another and the bookie may use this loophole to benefit from scamming innocent punters.
Rendering sportsbook events void or invalid before the event ends
This means if you win a multiple bet then you won’t be paid since a match is rendered void and they usually don’t provide valid reason for cancelation of live matches.
How to Completely Avoid Being Scammed
After identifying the online scam, we can avoid this through a variety of ways and we basically have about four ways we can do this, they include checking for licensing of the bookie, look for red flags or suspicious changes, check reviews online and lastly check on the ratings from independent websites. This time consuming doing all this research on a single bookmaker but its better safe than sorry and this will help in ensuring you don’t lose money to scammers.
Check for Licensing
a legit bookmaker will not hide their license numbers or states their registered in, so make sure the bookie is fully licensed to offer online betting services in your region and we should be careful with international firms that have multiple business across different parts of the world.
Suspicious Behavior
when registering with online bookmakers there are limits to how much information they can ask you during registration and usually bank account passwords are not part of the deal. Therefore, avoid clicking on links received from social media that are offering extravagant bonuses since such links are not secure, we can be easily hacked and also avoid downloading apps from suspicious links.
Check Reviews from other Punters
Such reviews are often genuine since the punter has had direct encounter with the online bookmaker and from experience may warn others through review, majority of the reviews found online basically touch on unfulfilled promises on the part of bonuses or promotions. Also complains on delayed withdrawals.
Ratings Awarded to the Bookmaker
Online platforms like 101.bet offer ratings on different online bookmakers and we can visit such sites to get a detailed review of such websites. However, ratings are sometimes paid for unless the site reviewing such platforms is a reputable company it’s advisable to avoid reviews from a site only focusing on one particular firm and in most case, they get paid for positive ratings and reviews on a particular betting platform.
History of Scams that Occurred in the past
There are a number of scams conducted in past that led to loss of a lot of money for unsuspecting punters in the market, they include the following three bookmakers.
Futurebet
They started scamming punters since 1998 when they were first established, they used iGaming software, steel head games, JP gateway, new wave marketing, gametech solutions and other odds maker. They used these methods to scam punters of millions of dollars over unspecified period of time and it was estimated to be a period of about 5 years give or take 2 years before being discovered. The bookmaker’s long history of scamming punters in the US market included delaying withdrawals or freezing accounts.
The world sports exchange (wsex)
They offered sports betting and casino games for punters in the market, the founder Jay Cohen was even sentenced for his crimes but later on managed to start a low commission poker platform in order to avoid being sentenced again until 2008 when they were discovered to be freezing accounts.
Sportsbook.ag
The bookmaker based in the USA was involved in a number of scams until they were discovered in early 2006 and have been involved loss of punters money, which they capitalized after selling their domain.
