The Biggest Crooks Getting Closer To Jail!
Dozens of casinos shut down leaving clients unpaid!
Illegal casinos' servers seized by the authorities!
From California to Vancouver to Australia!
Electrifying news of a group of companies that is causing havoc among consumers and servers around the world - online casinos run by the biggest crooks in the business - and a SPECIAL REPORT from an Australian journalist who's been on the trail of a bunch of illegal Internet sites, helping to investigate and track down vital information about "a web of deceit across four countries involving false addresses and dodgy gambling ventures", all of which cost customers dear. His Report details a "worldwide network of online scams netting hundreds of millions of dollars a year." You're not going to believe this! It's the best kind of investigative journalism, digging up all the hard facts to get at the truth, no matter what.
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Gambling Magazine was the first to publish the stories about the group of companies made up of Funscape.com, CasinoSoft.com the game developer, Handa Lopez Inc. (HLI) acting as the e-cash company, World Wide Multimedia, and Scylinx Corporation, with the mastermind behind some massive frauds, David Brown, working closely with Raymond Clark.
These are the crooks that rgtonline.com and casinowire.com were so fast to help some time ago, by publishing totally untrue and misleading stories about their competitors. Casinowire.com even published some fraudulent and fake e-mails to help these crooks. Casinowire.com is obviously a failure considering the amount they spend in advertising and the very low traffic they generate.
When their good friends got shut down by the authorities many days ago, rgtonline.com and casinowire.com failed to tell their readers about it. These guys are quick to publish totally untrue stories to damage their own competitors, but pretty slow to publish real news when their friends get busted.
Behind casinowire.com is a group of Swedish people hiding behind offshore nominees, they also develop software for online casinos at Boss Media, a game developer getting really desperate to compete with the "big boys." Some time ago we tried to contact the owners of these companies and only ended up talking to a Gibraltar company, specializing in international tax evasion and tax avoidance, which was acting for the Swedish owners.
We warned our readers for months about these crooks, and even left that article in a prominent and permanent position on our main page.
On a previous article we warned any honest webmaster not to advertise any of these sites who use the same rigged software, but it did not stop these sites from continuing to heavily promote them:
Rgtonline.com
Gambling.com
Gamblinglinks.com
Wheretobet.com
These are the worst offenders, because they know what is going on. These guys must be pretty hungry and desperate to make a quick dollar, because they don't really need to promote the biggest crooks in the industry; there are plenty of honest casinos out there just waiting for the first available space. The honest casinos only pay the normal advertising rates, which are much less than what the crooks pay. They have a program where they offer to the webmasters up to 50% of the consumer's net losses, instead of paying the normal advertising rates.
Any webmaster who promotes the biggest crooks in the industry should be partially responsible for all the money fraudulently taken from the consumers. With their commission averaging 35% to 50% of the money defrauded, they are partners in the scams, and they often make more money than the casinos themselves, who have other operating costs.
It would appear that all the casinos hosted by HLI and David Brown are currently shut down, with the exception of granddominican.com and starluck.com, who have their own servers. These crooks are still in the business of ripping off consumers.
Stay tuned for more details!
SPECIAL REPORT
Dear Sirs,
I am a Australian journalist currently trying to trace the background of a group of illegal casinos which have been operating through an ISP in Perth, Western Australia.
We've run stories in our newspaper over here over the last few days on a bunch of illegal Internet sites called Triple Heart, Lucky Liberty and Casino Utopia which have been running off a server at the offices of a company called Ace Online.
The server was shut down last week and the company maintains that it did not know what was on the server, which it says was given to it by a client (who it declined to name).
What may interest you is that there appear to be links between these casinos and funscape.com, including similar registration details (which appear to be false).
Also, in our enquiries there seems to be one constant with all the companies:
the Brand Group of Companies
Suite 1, 93 Commercial Street
Nanaimo, B.C., V9R 5G3
Tel: 250.716.8803 Fax: 250.716.8803
It appears that:
One or more British Columbia residents are operating illegal online gaming sites;
Many of these are hosted in BC or receive some direct support from BC networks;
The primary owners of these sites are BC residents;
The contact information used in the registration is listed as Vancouver but the address, phone number and name appear to be false;
Brand Communications appears to be the primary support network of the sites.
Internet traces of many of the casino sites all seem to lead back to www.brand.ca.
A scan of Brand.ca's netblock that holds a company called world-media.com (which is the contact email address given for the illegal sites) shows:
209.17.174.227 casinolingerie.com
209.17.174.228 funscape.com
209.17.174.229 highstakes.com
209.17.174.230 wallstreet-casino.com
209.17.174.234 goldstrikecasino.com
209.17.174.235 mikebros.com
209.17.174.237 triplediamondcasino.com
209.17.174.239 parisblvdcasino.com
209.17.174.244 megadollar.com
209.17.174.245 cybercitycasino.com
209.17.174.247 grandtowers.com
209.17.174.248 casinocaribe.com
209.17.174.249 gamingsoft.com
It would be hard for Brand to feign ignorance about all these sites.
As I understand it (but I may be wrong) in BC all Internet casinos have to be registered. In Western Australia, where Triple Heart, Lucky Liberty and Casino Utopia were operating from, internet gambling is illegal.
I was wondering if you could tell me if Brand has any registered casinos or if they have been investigated. The names which keep coming up in connection with the casinos (although many would appear to be false) are:
Kevin Little, Robert Benson, David Brown, Raymond Clark, Yance Simonet (contact person for funscape.com, highstakes.com and casinolingerie.com), Frank Kelly (contact person for casinocaribe.com), Mark Waters (contact person for casinosoft.com), Richard vandenBosch (ditto), D. James (contact person for cybersino.com, webmaster at funscape.com). ...
I hope this information is of use to you but I was also wondering if you might have any more information on these companies, specifically Triple Heart, Casino Utopia and Lucky Liberty - particularly on the connection between the sites, which are all registered in Canada, and Western Australia.
I was wondering if similar operations linked to funscape had been run offshore in other countries. It seems a good way of avoiding national laws.
Feel free to use this information. I hope we can be of help to each other.
Thanks,
[Name withheld for reasons of confidentiality]
The West Australian
PS. Here are the stories we have run so far:
SAT, May 15:
AN illegal online casino which encourages people to gamble with their credit cards has been operating internationally through a Perth Internet provider.
The operators of the site, Triple Heart, claimed the cybercasino was based in the Dutch Antilles and the name was registered in Vancouver, Canada.
But the website was actually being housed on a hard drive at Nedlands Internet service provider Ace Online.
The site was shut down suddenly on Thursday afternon after enquiries by The West Australian.
Ace Online said yesterday that they were unaware what was on the Triple Heart server, which had been sent to them by a client.
They said it was shut down at the request of the client, who they declined to name for confidentiality reasons.
"Basically I didn't even know it was a casino until yesterday," an Ace Online technician said yesterday.
He said he did not know how the website had operated.
"As far as I know it was just a website which was linked back to a US gambling site," he said.
The elaborate site had been set up as the Internet equivalent of a casino.
It offered people the chance to win money by buying virtual gaming chips with their credit cards which could then be used to place bets on a variety of games.
All the credit transactions were redirected to an Internet server in California where the money was deducted.
It is understood that about one gigabyte of Internet traffic was going through the site each day, indicating a large number of users.
The director of Q-Net Australia, which shares an Internet link with Ace Online, said yesterday that he did not know much about Triple Heart.
"All I knew was it created us a problem and we suggested to Ace Online that it was perhaps not a very good client," Philip Wilton said.
He said he had been concerned that the website was generating the Internet equivalent of junk mail, known as spam. He did not know where it was operated from.
"It may well have been (run from Canada)," he said.
"I don't know why they would have put the site here if it is originating in Canada but maybe the rules over there are slightly different to what they are here."
WA Racing and Gaming chief Barry Sargeant said he would not comment on a case of which he was not aware.
"Give me the location of the site and we will investigate it," he said.
Mr Sargeant said WA had no plans to licence cybercasinos.
Under the Gaming Commission Act, anyone who is knowingly involved in an unlawful game faces a $2500 fine or six months imprisonment, or both.
A person who places bets in relation to unlawful games can be fined up to $500.
International gambling industry consultant Glenn Barry said some casino sites were genuine and well-operated but it was hard to separate these from the scams.
SAT, May 15:
TRACKING down Triple Heart involves tracing a web of deceit across four countries involving false addresses and dodgy gambling ventures.
To visitors to the well-constructed site, the casino appeared to be operating from the Dutch Antilles but The West Australian has traced it back to a web server sitting in the Nedlands office of Perth Internet provider Ace Online.
The Triple Heart website name was actually registered in Canada 10 weeks ago to a man named Robert Benson. A Vancouver post office box is given on the registration form as a contact address.
But the phone and fax numbers listed as belonging to Mr Benson are not connected and Canada Post says the post code listed in the address is not valid.
The West Australian has also not had any replies to email sent to Mr Benson or to a man named Keith Little, who has gone by the title of Triple Heart administrator in emails sent by the site to disgruntled US Internet users.
When Triple Heart went online about two months ago it advertised itself through mass emails proclaiming it as "better than Vegas".
"New Award Winning Casino... Pays Instantly! Win Real $Money$ Blackjack Video Poker Slots Roulette Keno and more..." read the blurb, which was sent out en masse to email addresses across the world.
Once visitors were at the website, they were invited to register their name and email address and submit credit card details so they could buy "virtual" gaming chips. With these they could enter the casino and place their bets. Wins would be credited to their credit cards.
To complicate things further, a trace of the credit card details reveals that they were actually diverted to another web site owned by a company called World Systems at the same Vancouver post office box address listed for the elusive Mr Benson.
And while the address for that separate website is listed as Curacao, it can be traced back to a computer server in Redwood City California.
And this, of course, traces back to that post office box in Canada.
It is ironic that it is most probably the massive amount of emails sent by the Triple Heart operators to drum up business for the website that may have proven its downfall.
Hundreds, possibly thousands of people were spammed (the cyber equivalent of junkmail) by the website's owners.
When an Internet user in the US contacted Triple Heart to complain about the spam, he was told to stop the sham in a reply from Mr Little.
"Why don't you admit that you are not interested in email but rather doing away with internet gaming?," the email read.
".... you aren't getting any mail at all. You're a fraud and a sham. You are only interested in eradicating internet gaming.
"Mr. XXXX, we will continue this game as long as you want it to go on."
Emails like that prompted a worldwide group of loosely-organised anti-spammers - going by the name of the Lumber Cartel - to start an active campaign against the site and previous casinos which were also believed to be run by the elusive Mr Benson.
One of those sites, Lucky Liberty, was terminated after complaints about spam.
Joe Sekhon, from the abuse department at Canadian ISP BC Tel, said the operators of the site had been given a warning, which they had ignored.
It is also understood that the Triple Heart operators were behind another ill-fated online casino venture, Casino Utopia.
"When is Canada going to crack this guy's walnuts?" one member of the Lumber Cartel asked in a post on an Internet newsgroup.
And now that Triple Heart has been taken offline, it is unclear what will happen to the many punters and their virtual chips which have now vanished from cyberspace along with the casino.
Q-Net, which shares an Internet link with the company, has named two of its servers Keno and Blackjack. It said yesterday that this was an unfortunate coincidence.
Ace Online maintains that it was unaware of the cybercasino until yesterday.
MON, May 16:
THE organisers of an illegal online casino which operated through a Perth Internet provider are believed to be behind a worldwide network of online scams netting hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The elaborate Triple Heart cybercasino - which promised quick wins and "thousands paid out every day" through bets placed with a credit card - was taken offline last Thursday after an investigation by The West Australian tracked the site to the office of a Nedlands Internet provider.
The West Australian understands that at least one other illegal casino, Casino Utopia, also operated through the same hard drive as Triple Heart.
The company, Ace Online, maintains it was unware what was on the Triple Heart server, which had been sent to it by a client.
Director Lawrence Fowler said yesterday that the company had not had any contact with the client, who he declined to name for confidentiality reasons, since the server was pulled offline.
The Triple Heart site purported to be based in the Netherlands Antilles but was actually registered in Canada and housed on a hard drive at Ace Online.
The site is believed to have been run from Canada with credit card deductions taking place in the US.
Triple Heart and Casino Utopia were both registered in Vancouver using the same false name, address and contact details.
They are two of the dozens of illegal cybercasinos which have operated briefly in the last six months.
Credit card transactions for all of the sites were redirected to the same Internet address in California.
Several Internet sites used by the casino operators for illegal gaming and redirecting of credit card details or mail were off-line yesterday. But a separate link to Canada remained active.
The WA Department of Racing and Gaming said yesterday that it was very interested in the operations of Triple Heart but was not prepared to reveal its next move.
TUES, May 17:
A Perth Internet provider linked to an illegal online casino operation was told almost two months ago that a casino was being run through its offices.
Ace Online claimed last week that it had no previous knowledge of the casino website.
But the West Australian has copies of emails sent to the company as far back as March complaining about the casino and junk email which had been advertising it.
The Triple Heart cybercasino - which encouraged people to gamble with their credit cards - was registered in Canada and purported to be based in the Netherlands Antilles.
But the website was housed in a hard drive at the Nedlands office of Ace Online.
At least two other online casinos, Casino Utopia and Lucky Liberty, are now believed to have been housed on the same server. All share links with a worldwide network of online casinos believed to be worth hundreds of milions of dollars a year.
Ace Online staff said the hard drive had been given to them by a client, who they declined to name. They said they were unaware of the server's content until last week.
But the company was repeatedly contacted by frustrated Internet users who complained about junk email - known as spam - which was advertising Triple Heart, Casino Utopia and Lucky Liberty.
On May 3, Ace Online replied to one of the complainants: "I have spoken to this customer on a multiple number of occasions and I have been advised they do not spam.
"We lease rack space to this customer in our server room on a monthly/3 monthly pre-paid arrangement," the email read.
"When our initial contract was signed it was for server hosting for web purposes."
When told that a new casino site, Triple Heart, was operating through an Ace Online server, the company replied: "We lease rack space to them and I do not have any access or control what so ever to their server.
"... We are a company, they are our clients. I am not at liberty to chop them off the air without some very solid reasons."
Q-Net Australia, which supplies Internet bandwidth to Ace Online, distanced itself from its client yesterday and confirmed the existence of the emails.
Q-Net director Philip Wilton said his company had received copies of emails about the casino which had been sent to Ace Online.
Ace director Lawrence Fowler refused to comment yesterday, saying he had been advised not to say anything about Triple Heart.
WA Racing, Gaming and Liquor chief Barry Sargeant confirmed yesterday that an investigation was being carried out into Triple Heart's Perth connections.
article #34/15
We invite our readers to contact our editor with any useful information they may have about these crooks. We would like to share the information with the Australian journalist who sent us his special report.
Editor: Editor@GamblingMagazine.com
Publisher: Publisher@GamblingMagazine.com
Telephone: U.S.A. (212) 208-4414
Copyright © 1999 Gambling Magazine
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