I'm sure you've all heard the saying,
"Fool me once, shame of you, fool me twice, shame on me."
This next little ditty of a scam works on just such a principle,
and more than a few players can say, "…shame on me."
Let's say you've fallen victim to a casino scam. It happens.
You found a site, something along the lines of "You're-finally-gonna-win-millions-at-this-site.com"
got so excited that you couldn't wait and plunged right in without
even researching the site. After depositing $250, playing for
an hour or two, you cash out what's left of your bankroll (about
$50) and you go about your life. A few days later, when you
still haven't received your cash, you query the "support"
staff that promised to "stand ready to assist you 24/7"
only to be treated to a crash course in Spanish and broken English
and eventually, completely ignored.
So much for the fifty bucks.
But it doesn't end there, because a few months later, you start
getting e-mails from a new compelling site, "Win-back-the-money-we-stole-from-you.com"
another scam site, possibly even the sister site to the one
that ripped you off in the first place. How do they know where
to reach you? Your registration form.
Remember that simple, 3-page form you filled out when you signed
up with the casino? It's gonna come back to haunt you. If you've
been scammed by a site, you can bet they will use your own personal
information against you. They'll e-mail you compelling offers,
send you snail mail rewards packages, CD's with their software,
anything to get you in their clutches again. Only this time,
it's a "new site" that you don't recognize and usually
don't associate with the one that ripped you off in the first
place! Trouble's brewing in this instance, and unless you learned
your lesson the first time, you're set to get taken again. What
can you do?
While it may not always be possible to avoid the first scam,
there is a very easy way to get around the second: separate
e-mail accounts. Each time you register at a site, be sure to
set up a free e-mail account (Hotmail, Mail.com, etc.,) that
you use only with that site. By doing this first, if you do
become one of the "initiated" you'll know that any
future correspondence to that e-mail address is probably coming
from a scammer, and should be avoided.
