Sports betting: the PronoClub site champion of the online scam
Online sports betting is a constantly expanding market in France.
AFP / Archives
Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow
2 min
Boosted by the health crisis and aggressive communication, online sports betting platforms continue to grow.
But be careful, because alongside legal and regulated offers, a multitude of online scammers are rife on the web ready to rob you.
The latest case concerns the PronoClub site, which is accused of massive fraud of several million euros.
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The PronoClub platform, which connects bettors and sports prognosticators, offered an illegal online practice allowing users to invest money which was then played for them. With a lot of advertising on social networks and even on television channels, the site promised 10% of cumulative profitability each month, as well as a “
guaranteed
”
return
of the initial investment.
But now, after the closure of this enticing service, thousands of subscribers would not have been reimbursed. Worse, the general conditions of sale would have been modified
a posteriori in
order to make this reimbursement almost impossible. About a hundred complaints on the grounds of deceptive and illegal commercial practices reached the Nanterre public prosecutor's office. The damage is estimated at several million euros, according to the victims' lawyers.
The first victims of these fraudulent practices are the uninitiated, especially young people who want to make money easily with sports betting.
However, the National Gaming Authority sounded the alarm for months by inviting punters to be wary of "
tipsters
", a term of English origin which designates a person providing "
advice
" or good "
tips
".
A flourishing market
"
Our role is to inform the public and especially vulnerable people, especially the youngest, on the dangerousness of illegal forecasting sites and we also have an alert function with other administrative authorities who have, for their part, instruments repressive that we do not have,
explains Frédéric Guerchoun, the legal director of the ANJ.
We were thus able to observe several illegal practices by monitoring the sports betting market. We have seen the development of the growing activities of
"tipsters"
by noting that some odds on sports betting collapsed following tips from tipsters.
We then decided to intervene vigorously with our online operators and with the public to put an end to these manipulations that rig the odds and therefore the winnings of sports betting.
In the end, we realize that our intuition was unfortunately well founded since some sites are now encountering some difficulties with the legal authorities.
"
►Also listen
: Sports betting
: "In 2020, a new record with nearly 5.4 billion euros in stake"
However, the online sports betting market has never been so flourishing in France.
After the health restrictions of 2020, stakes soar in the first quarter of 2021, reaching a record amount of 2.2 billion euros.
The number of punters, too, jumped 29% with 2.5 million active player accounts in France, according to the latest data released by the National Gaming Authority.
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