I spoke about some online scammers and how to avoid them in my last article (Read it here), and today I want to warn you on one more get-rich-quick scheme that became really popular during the last few years. Sports betting is not so popular in some countries, but most European countries are into sports betting, and there are tons of gambling addicts looking for betting tips online.

I will try to explain how this gambling scam works, so everyone can understand it, even those who are not into betting and gambling.

Fake Facebook Betting Tips Account

Most of these scammers are scamming people through Facebook because they can create targeted niche ads and they can reach a specific population and place their targeted ads specifically for that area.

One huge problem is the Facebook ads policy, because they are sometimes blind to these ads, and they will allow scammers to advertise their scams on Facebook, so scammers can get your money and you can’t sue them because they are using fake IP addresses, fake Paypal accounts and fake Facebook profiles.

Most of these guys are using pages like this:

Mr. Jon Betting Tips

Bet Tips King

Free Betting Tips

You can find tons of similar examples if you just search for “betting tips” in a Facebook search. You probably already noticed some of these betting ads all across the web.

Betting Scam Step by Step

Ok, it’s easy for them to create their social accounts, it’s easy to advertise, and reach targeted people, and it’s even easier to scam people who are reaching for these betting tips. Scammers create some random Facebook post like:

“John King Betting” is offering a 100% Free 2.30 pm Basketball Tip Today, contact me in PM and I will send you a free tip!

They will now boost their post using Facebook ads, and 20.000 people will see that post, they are targeting 15-60 year-old males so they can get even better conversion rates.

So at the end of the day, they will get 200 PMs with people asking for a free betting tip.

This is how they lure people in, for example; Let’s say there is a Nets VS Clippers basketball game tonight.

Game 1:

They will take 100 people from their list (I am speaking about 200 people who sent them a PM regarding free tips) and they will send this message to the first 100 people:

The Nets will win the game tonight they got big money to let the Clippers win.

And they will send this one to other 100 people from their PMs list:

The Clippers will win the game tonight they got big money to let the Nets win.

Once this game is over, 100 people will have a winning ticket.

Game 2:

80 out of these 100 people will come back and ask for more tips, but this time they will charge $50 for their next gambling tip.

So 60 out of these 80 people will buy this new tip, and the scammer will send this to 30 of them:

Team 1 Wins, and they will send this to 30 other people from their list: Team 2 Wins.

So they already made $3,000 right here.

Game 3:

Next thing, one of these teams will win and they will have 30 people asking them for more tips because they already won using their tips, not once, but twice!

Now, they will charge $300 for the next tip, and they will send:

Team 1 Wins to 15 people, and they will send: Team 2 Wins to the other 15 people from their new list.

Scammers made $9,000 more today, that’s $12,000 profit during the last 3 days.

Game 4:

Now 15 out of those 30 people will win again, and these 15 people already made money 3 times during the last 3 days using the help of this scammer, and they will pay anything for the next tip, because they want more tips.

Now, the scammer will charge them $1,000 for a tip, and 6 out of 15 people who have won the previous game will pay for this tip.

Profit from this game will be: 6 X $1,000 = $6,000.

And again, they will send this to 3 people:

Team 1 Wins and they will send: Team 2 Wins to 3 other players.

Game 5:

Now, 3 people will win again, and this is their fourth win in 5 days using the help of this scammer, and they will probably think this guy is a freaking gambling guru and they already made like $10,000 with this guy so the next time 1 of those 3 players will pay $5,000 for the tip.

Now, this is when this could end up, this 1 player can win again and pay him even more money but let’s say it’s over now.

The scammer will delete everything, Facebook account, Paypal account, Login details, everything.

Profit:

Scammer made $20,000 in 5 days, and let’s say he spent $1,000 on ads in order to reach his victims, his profit is still 19,000$.

(all amounts and statements are average numbers from my head, but I think they are pretty accurate).

There are some risks for these scammers, sometimes their game will end up X, for example, 98-98 and their tips are Team1 and Team2 options only, so they can be stopped with this ‘X’ on every game, but they can spend $1,000 on the new ads and they can always find more victims.

 How to Avoid Gambling Scams

If people are using this scam on Facebook, they will run a Facebook Ad with a title like this:

” Get your free Football tip tonight.” or ” Win big tonight with my Fixed basketball game tip! FREE FREE FREE”

They will often promote their ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

You can often see these scammers commenting on some news portals like this:

These scammers are using tons of fake Facebook profiles and they are spamming comment sections on popular sites like Reddit, Twitter, News articles…