This is another form of scam I've seen being promoted heavily.
So if you have even the slightest interest towards sports, you're likely to follow some teams' or atheles' social media accounts.
Instagram tends to freely share your personal information with "advertisers" which often just means scammers.
So this scam is often targeting sports fans through Instagram and Facebook.
And if you or your friends follow something related to gambling or sports you're likely to be targeted by such ads promoting this scam.
So let's examine what this scam is about. If you click into an ad promoting this type of scam, you'll be prompted into a Telegram channel where supposedly information about fixed matches is provided.
As you probably already know, scammers love telegram.
The room will be populated with a long history of highly polished messages about supposed information and past success stories.
However, what matters most is the most recent message in the channel.
This message will mention the exact score of a supposed fixed match.
What's the catch?
Well...
This match doesn't exist. Perhaps the teams will sound a little plausible, but then they will say [U23], which means that you can't bet on such a match anywhere.
The whole allure of this scam is to actually put your money in THEIR recommended bookmaker because it's going to be the only one accepting bets on this otherwise fictional match.
And then you'll be met with the harsh reality that this bookmaker only actually takes deposits, no withdrawals!
The above is a rating someone left for this fake bookmaker called
SpaceXlife. It appears that this scam operation has been running for 2 months.
Probably once the scammers feel like they've made enough they'll just switch to a new name and website.
All this might sound too obvious to you but people unaccustomed to online gambling could easily fall victim to something like this.
It's sad how social media has made the process of scamming so streamlined actually...
Honestly, it's kind of on these people who get victimized by these types of tongue and cheek scams if they got scammed. The jig is so obvious and everyone who has half a brain's gonna realize that this is as shady as it can be and even if it's real, it's too good to be true.
Let me paint you a picture, I got insider knowledge about who's going to win in the next few games, and somehow instead of collecting the profits for myself by making sure that less people know about the advantage I have and betting on legitimate sites to make sure I really earn the profits, I reach out to some nitwit on twitter that I find is keen on sportsbetting to pool the bets and give them insider information for free. Doesn't sound as "smart and convoluting" now when I put it like that doesn't it?
Every piece of scam on the internet requires some basic level of understanding in the field that they are operating under to be able to spot on and avoid. And I'm pretty sure everyone who's got their ducks in a row within sportsbetting isn't going to fall for this obvious honey trap. I get the intention for this post and honestly I appreciate it cause at the end of the day some idiot on twitter's gonna fall for this shit and blame the casino and the industry for their lack of preparation but I reckon that anyone who's worth protecting in this industry's already secured in the first place, so it doesn't really add anything of value to those who are veterans for that matter.