Rogue affiliate on steroids.

vinylweatherman

You type well loads
Joined
Oct 14, 2004
Location
United Kingdom
Just seen this on Facebook. This could actually be quite serious for the casinos who are being promoted because this is a fake testimonial advertisement, illegal under UK and European law. Since they are PAYING Facebook to be allowed to push this onto people's feeds, it cannot be reported to Facebook for what it is.

When I first visited, it was promoting Casumo casino, which doesn't even accept US players, making this quite a feat for that McDonalds employee. However, when I went back to make the screenshot, it had changed to promoting LeoVegas, and presumably this is a random rotation of brands so that each visit shows a different casino having hosted this specific win. One thing this does do is prove beyond doubt that this is "fake testimonial" advertising. Since some of these casinos have UKGC licenses, and these advertisements are being placed into the feeds of UK Facebook users, the potential for serious license violations being caused by this rogue affiliate are plain to see.

Funnily enough, this is the same fake testimonial that came to light earlier, but it was being used in the Icelandic market, and for Casino Rewards, so wasn't really going to get noticed. This however, IS going to get noticed, and by the wrong people in the end (UKGC, ASA, etc)
 

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Well spotted Vinyl. Yep, even big casino groups like LeoVegas and Casumo are not asking enough questions of their affiliates. There are plenty of people out there out for making a quick buck before Facebook or the operators shut their crooked campaigns down.

All we can do is raise these as quickly as possible to as many people as we can. Did you send a message to the LV rep about this ad?
 
Well spotted Vinyl. Yep, even big casino groups like LeoVegas and Casumo are not asking enough questions of their affiliates. There are plenty of people out there out for making a quick buck before Facebook or the operators shut their crooked campaigns down.

All we can do is raise these as quickly as possible to as many people as we can. Did you send a message to the LV rep about this ad?

It's not just one casino, it looks like this page is designed to cycle through a number of brands, so I put it here in the hope that all affiliates and affiliate managers would spot it as who knows, it could be their casino next. What I find even worse is that this is actually condoned by Facebook, they have taken this affiliate's money so that his spam is now classed as a "sponsored post", which means it can't be reported to Facebook for violations of community standards as would be possible with regular spam posts. The only options available are to hide this particular advert, and flag that I don't like to see similar adverts. The problem is that this does nothing to protect the people who would actually fall for this.

Casinos are going to notice at the CS level, so to see if their brand is involved, they should ask CS to report back to management any contact or complaints from new players about not having been given their 80 free spins for signing up, as this is what this advert is promising, and what is likely to see some of these new players making formal complaints to the ASA or similar organisations in their country about the misleading advert followed by what in effect is "bait & switch" because CS are bound to offer these new players the offer that actually exists at the time for new players.

We have also seen a poor attitude from some affiliate programs when it comes to dealing with such matters, some have been so lax that they have been on the receiving end of Bryan's wrath for refusing to take action against affiliates caught misusing his trademarks, or hacking other peoples' websites to make them display casino ads.

This is possibly a much bigger issue that can be seen from a single visit, as two visits have shown different casino names, so there could be a large pool of brands being rotated, and of course it could be partly driven by the country of the viewer, so I am seeing UK friendly casinos, whereas someone viewing from the US would be seeing US facing casinos.
 
I too have seen such ads. It was a Tim Horton's (coffeeshop chain) from my city. It was not on facebook, but on some page like Buzzfeed or Daily News and for a Casino Rewards property, can't recall if it was Zodiac or not. It also claimed she won Mega Moolah for some amount which mega moolah has never been hit at, 600,000K plus I think.

I think poor "Juanita" or whoever had also had some kind of personal tragedy prior to winning. I'm off on holidays or I'd go looking for it.

This stuff makes me angry.
 
@vinylweatherman Thank you for reporting this, can you please share the URL (DM is OK too)

@PMconker We at Casumo have different approach and it would be very useful if we have actual feedback so we can contact the Affiliates.
 
@vinylweatherman Thank you for reporting this, can you please share the URL (DM is OK too)

@PMconker We at Casumo have different approach and it would be very useful if we have actual feedback so we can contact the Affiliates.


Luckily I had posted on it, so was able to retrieve it from my activity log. Again it says Casumo, but it seems to dynamically alter the name of the casino each visit.

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.


Clicking on the Casumo link gives this URL - you may be able to ID the affiliate behind this.


hxxps://www.casumo.com/en-gb/?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=614381


If you look at the source code for the page, it's clear that they have even gone to the trouble of faking the Facebook social plugin and it's comments.
 
Here is how it shows on my Facebook, and what the page posting it looks like. The page may well be a front, because it has very little in the way of posts over what looks like a couple of years, so maybe they tricked facebook by buying advertising credits on the basis of it being a "foodie" page, and is using those credits to place online casino ads instead.

The name is probably fake too, but you never know, this could be the affiliate using her own name thinking the disguise as a food blogger will put people off the scent. Of course, the other possibility is that she has abandoned this page, and someone has hacked it and taken it over for use as a casino ad spamming page.
 

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That food blogger looks very much like Zoella the famous Youtuber who lives about 10 miles away from me. So they have obviously faked that Facebook account also.


Well that's interesting, because someone commented "Hello Zoella" on the page.

Perhaps you should let her know that someone is misusing her image and damaging her reputation with this account, and she would be able to have Facebook shut it down. What I find astonishing is that this account has actually been allowed to purchase Facebook credits in order to sponsor posts and other forms of advertising. Now surely Facebook would have had to do KYC as it was accepting money, and it's failure may well mean that Facebook has been duped into taking money from someone who has faked their personal details, in effect a completely made up person, but using Zoella's photo.
 
Google Reverse image search shows the images (especially the one of the guy on the top right) on a bunch more ads.

I even found what looks like this particular AD on a site where you can buy AD examples and push them to AD Campaign providers.

The ADS I keep finding seem to highlight different casinos, which confirm the idea that these are rotating through a list of sponsors.


It gets better, I've seen the ADS in at about 8 different languages. (From my google search, not all linked to this one case I'm sure.)


The URL does not seem to be .htaccess protected.


newcasinotips.com/casinotodaynews/


From what I can see there are ADS in there targeting different regions, all for some magic Jackpot.

It looks like a pretty systematic approach to advertising, since each affiliate URL is embedded in the top right hand paragraph should be easy to track down.
 
Well that's interesting, because someone commented "Hello Zoella" on the page.

Perhaps you should let her know that someone is misusing her image and damaging her reputation with this account, and she would be able to have Facebook shut it down. What I find astonishing is that this account has actually been allowed to purchase Facebook credits in order to sponsor posts and other forms of advertising. Now surely Facebook would have had to do KYC as it was accepting money, and it's failure may well mean that Facebook has been duped into taking money from someone who has faked their personal details, in effect a completely made up person, but using Zoella's photo.

I could send her an email, whether she will see it or not is another matter as she has nearly 12 million Youtube subscribers. ( She is one of the top 5 UK based Youtubers ).

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.
 
I could send her an email, whether she will see it or not is another matter as she has nearly 12 million Youtube subscribers. ( She is one of the top 5 UK based Youtubers ).

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.


Any excuse Webzcas. No doubt you will be asking if she can sign your copy of 'Girl Online' while she checks this spammers avatar. Very crafty :thumbsup:
 
This thread has provided a bit of entertainment this am...:lolup: Seriously, this affiliate is out of control!! FB would not hesitate to close my account if this were me !
It is pretty clear someone is paying them to keep this account open!
 
This thread has provided a bit of entertainment this am...:lolup: Seriously, this affiliate is out of control!! FB would not hesitate to close my account if this were me !
It is pretty clear someone is paying them to keep this account open!


The page owner is the one paying Facebook. They use this page to spawn "sponsored posts" that advertise casinos based on this fake story about the McDonalds employee winning the progressive jackpot during his shit break, and it's not the only person to have won a jackpot whilst in the can at work. Facebook DO allow online casinos to have pages and buy advertising (outside of the US anyway), but their policy prohibits this level of fakery as a page being used to advertise casinos should be a casino page, not some fake food blogger who looks like a clone of Zoella.
 
My Facebook is also getting bombarded with similar ads, and I am based in New Zealand so it is obviously a worldwide target by the looks of things....
The ads always relate to a person in NZ though and NZ terminology used, so they obviously do their research!
 
My Facebook is also getting bombarded with similar ads, and I am based in New Zealand so it is obviously a worldwide target by the looks of things....
The ads always relate to a person in NZ though and NZ terminology used, so they obviously do their research!

I see them in Swedish all the time too, and all of them are for LeoVegas. If they at least had them out there a little longer than a half to one day before changing to a new one it might be easier to stop, but I can't even get the reps to see them because they don't reply to me fast enough :(
 
It's pretty obvious that no one will crack down on these affiliates until a government entity gets involved. And it's always the same brands that are affected :rolleyes:

I've never seen ads like this for Guts (all GiG brands for that matter), Video Slots, Slotsmillion, 32Red and co., Trada Casino, etc. Funny how these are the casinos that receive Casinomeister Awards in recent years.

Maybe this says something about the quality of our awards.
 
Ironically, I came across a Facebook ad today so took a screenshot.

It leads to this page xttps://cybercbgames.com/community/blog/interrupted-wedding-anniversary ( replace x with h )
The ad is for Grand Mondial Casino

facebook-ad1.jpg
 

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