While it’s great that more and more people can play poker over the web, the risk of online poker theft is still present. Even in a regulated industry, fraudsters will find ways of separating you from your cash. And such is the case for several players who have lost a lot of money via a scam using a popular payment processor.
Today’s gambling news finds that poker players at the WSOP, BetMGM, and other popular websites who have used the services of Global Payments Gaming Solutions should check their bank statements immediately. It seems there is a vulnerability in the company’s VIP Preferred service that has already cost players tens of thousands of dollars in online poker theft.
The VIP Preferred service allows players to store information for multiple checking accounts, and to deposit up to $50,000 to poker sites over a seven-day period. And while Global Payments requires an identity verification to make an initial deposit, that does not seem to be the case for another deposit made to a different poker site.
Apparently, fraudsters used this to their advantage. And so, if a player had their identify verified when depositing to WSOP (for example), then that process was skipped when the same player (or someone using that players information) made a deposit to another site, like BetMGM. And thus, a scam is born.
These fraudster, who apparently had access to players personal data and bank information, then created new accounts on different poker sites… usually in another state. Of course, they chose sites that shared the Global Payments identity verification, who did not verify their identity, and made large deposits into those new accounts.
Those deposits were then quickly withdrawn to a fake Venmo Debit MasterCard, and the online poker theft were complete. Multiple players reported losing thousands, and some as much as $10,000, in this scam. BetMGM stated that they were aware of this issue and are working with victims to make sure refunds are processed.
We could not find any comments on this issue from the Global Payments company.
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