Have you ever walked out of a department
store, the proud owner of a 35" Zenith television wondering
if your new pride-and-joy was really nothing more than a cheap
imitation - a Zenith shell with the guts of a lesser brand?
Of course not. You know that these stores run a legitimate business
and would never risk their reputation to make a few quick dollars.
The same assurance should never be associated with online gambling.
It's too easy to open up shop online, defraud your customers,
disappear, get a new URL and begin the cycle all over again.
While this may sound outlandish this sort of thing happens every
year leaving thousands of players out in the cold.
One of the most common fraudulent
practices mastered by unscrupulous online gambling sites involves
simple deception via the theft of materials from legitimate,
proven sites. Graphics, general design, HTML, even banners can
all easily be copied and used to create a professional-looking
shell for a rogue site. These rogues know that a typical player
makes their decision to gamble online before ever even visiting
the site. They also know that if they get them through their
virtual doors, they have to overcome the player's instinctive
mistrust of both the Internet and gambling. To do this, they
have to look safe.
To achieve this feat without having to spend thousands of dollars
in design (after all, if exposed they may have to morph within
only a few weeks) they simply copy what they like from other
sites and put out their virtual shingle. Some sites even go
as far as making exact copies of the winners pages and testimonial
pages of legitimate sites, thus making themselves appear to
be great sites loaded with thousands of happy players. Only
a player who is intimately familiar with the "host"
or original site, would notice the scam.Next
