Online crime and internet gambling

Abstract

The spread of Internet gambling has raised several issues concerning motivations to gamble, consumer behaviour online, problem gambling, security of Web sites, and fairness and integrity of the games. Rather surprisingly, however, there has been little in the way of research regarding online crime and Internet gambling even though it is an urgent priority. This article addresses this absence by investigating the types, techniques, and organizational dynamics of online crime at the portals of Internet gambling sites. Our approach is qualitative in nature and explores, using document analysis, the activities of cybernomads, dot.con teams, and criminal networks. We demonstrate that there are different levels of criminal organization, distinguished by their complexity of division of labour; coordination of roles; purposefulness of association between criminals; and ability to avoid, evade, or neutralize security systems and law enforcement. We conclude by arguing that conventional understandings of real-world gambling-related criminal relationships have been altered by the digital environment of the Internet.

Incidence of Internet gambling in Sweden: results from the Swedish longitudinal gambling study

“…Since the first Internet casino gambling site was launched in 1995, increased access to the Internet and Internet gambling has changed the gambling scene globally and raised several issues concerning gambling and problem gambling (McMullan & Rege, 2010;Potenza et al, 2011;Watson, Liddel Jr., Moore, & Eshee Jr, 2004).…”

Consumer attitudes towards Internet gambling: Perceptions of responsible gambling policies, consumer protection, and regulation of online gambling sites

“…Concerns regarding fair play practices are reasonable as there are numerous examples of online gambling sites not paying winnings, cheating players with unfair games, or stealing deposits and personal details (Gainsbury, 2012;McMullan & Rege, 2010). The Australian Productivity Commission gambling inquiry (2010) concluded that increased legalization and regulation of online gambling would be more effective than prohibition to protect residents from harm as this would result in increased consumer choice and higher standards for sites that would have to compete for customers.…”

A taxonomy of gambling-related crime

“…Moreover, criminological studies (McMullan and Rege 2007, 2010McMullan, 2012;Banks, 2013Banks, , 2014 have highlighted the multiplicity of ways in which gambling and crime intersect in online environments. Online gambling can operate as source of criminal activity, as a vehicle for crime or support for other criminal enterprise, with incidents of match fixing, distributed denial of service (DDoS) and cyberextortion, illegal and underage gambling, fraud, theft and money laundering having been identified by researchers.…”