March Madness gets underway this week, and the American Gaming Association estimates that Americans will bet a combined $2.72 billion on the men's and women's tournaments. If accurate, that will amount to roughly 2.2% of the total handle wagered legally in American in all of 2023 across all sports.
Clearly, March Madness is a massive sporting event, and anything that achieves such mass will require the participation of inexperienced bettors – bettors who are more susceptible to scams involving mobile betting apps, touts, and sports betting syndicates than more seasoned punters might be.
To this end, Sports Handle spoke with Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence for the global cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, in an effort to help newbies avoid throwing their money down a crooked hole of nefariousness.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
Sports Handle: Is March Madness the American sporting event that tends to attract the most novice bettors? If so, why do you think this is?
Jon Clay: Yeah, it’s an interesting one. If you look at the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl’s crazy. But anybody has their college team that they root for and maybe they don’t do a lot of betting and maybe they want to start betting. You have 68 teams in the tournament, so there’s a lot of opportunity and it goes for quite a long time. So you have this long option for bets and you have micro-betting happening now. Online betting and gambling has exploded in the U.S. You don’t have to bet lots. You can throw a couple of bucks at it and try to make money, and they'll offer you bonuses to bet with them – which is also the reason why there are tons of scammers. They do the same thing.
SH: When you talk about “scam websites” are you referring to sites that have absolutely zero interest in paying out bets, well-tenured offshore operators, or both?
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JC: It’s pretty much the impostors. When we talk about a scam site, it’s usually a fake site. With that said, there are cases where they may pay you some money because they want you to bet more, but eventually what happens is you will lose all your money. You’ll reach out to them and they’ll ignore you. They usually try to mimic legitimate sites.
SH: Why do you think so many people get duped into betting with scam sites or unlicensed operators? Is it a lack of education as to where and on what platforms legal sports betting is permitted or something else?
JC: People want to win money, make easy money, and the scammers know this. So when they entice you with that type of language — 100% win guarantee — people fall for that. Unfortunately, humans are gullible. We fall for a lot of scams all the time, and with today’s technology, they can make these scams look so legitimate. Sham betting syndicates will invite you into a group chat and make it look like it’s a legitimate group. There’s an education issue. People don’t realize that a lot of the stuff online is fake because you can emulate legitimate sites very easily. ChatGPT can craft a message that is so legitimate-looking. They can do it in any language.
SH: What steps would you recommend that a novice bettor take to separate legitimate sites like FanDuel and ESPN BET from unregulated offshore operators and pure impostors?
JC: Work with the well-known sites. If you get an unsolicited email or text message, I would ignore it totally. Don’t get scammed into, “Hey, you’re going to win your first bet.” I would definitely stick with those known, legitimate sites and I would bookmark them. They (the impostors) will make domains that look very similar to FanDuel or ESPN BET, but there’s a different character or something in there. You’re gonna be asked to create an account. For sure use multi-factor authentication to access your account every time because they will try to steal your credentials to get access to your account.
SH: What are some of the more popular unregulated or impostor betting sites that people should be aware of so they can avoid them?
JC: They come and go so fast. We add them to our web reputation database and block them for our customers. Certainly have a security product running on your devices. The other thing to think about, though, is with the messages, it oftentimes will not show you the URL. It will have a hyperlink. If you hover over it, you can usually see the domain, but on your mobile phone, it’s very difficult to do. So, again, if you get a message that doesn’t have the full URL or even if it’s a tiny URL, I’d be very leery of any message.
SH: Who are some of your main clients?'
JC: We focus on commercial customers and consumer customers. They’re all over the world. We have free and paid-for apps that you can install on your devices. On the commercial side, if you’re doing that stuff (betting with sketchy sites) on your work device, you could infect your work device and that could cause lateral movement into your corporate network. As a business, do you block those sites for your employees?
SH: We've written about pick-sellers and touts before. Do you feel state regulatory agencies should find a way to demand transparency from and perhaps license these individuals or is it virtually impossible given the interstate nature of their business?
JC: That’s a tough one. It almost has to be a federal law. Gambling is state-by-state, so it’s going to be very difficult to do that, but I think there’s definitely a need for that because you want to know if this is a legitimate group or individual. But then, how do you deal with the offshore stuff because they’re not local to the U.S.? Unfortunately, right now, a lot of the onus is on the person themselves.
SH: Regarding sham betting syndicates, I realize people get suckered into fraudulent investment schemes all the time, but if I respond to an unsolicited text or email from someone I don’t know by giving them money, aren’t I just a gullible moron? I’m not forgiving the sins of the solicitor here, but at some level, people have to own their own stupidity, right?
JC: Yes, they do, and that’s the challenge. A lot of these betting syndicates operate on social media and they’ll entice you through your social media channels. They can make it look so legitimate. Any unsolicited stuff, I would be very leery of. If you have friends or family who bet, talk to them and ask, “Who do you use?”