On April 30, the Dutch Gambling Commission Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) officially warned in a press release about three alleged collection agencies, which are fraudsters. They are supposed to try to collect money with fictitious gambling debts.
The collection agencies not according to the Dutch Gambling Commission aggressive fraudsters, who have no company entries at the Chamber of Commerce. They deceive the victims that they have unpaid bills with gambling providers or travel agencies and ask them to pay the bills.
Why is the Dutch Gambling Authority engaged?
Normally, consumer protection centres such as the Dutch Autoriteit consumer & Markt deal with fraud warnings. Since the debt collection agencies want to extort money in this case with gambling debts, the Gambling Authority has now reacted with a warning. In this case, they had worked with the Consumer Protection Centre and hoped to reach the clientele of the Online casino visitors better.
The companies involved are “Lootsma & Partners”, “Bailiff Smits & Co”and” Inter Payment Service”. They had tried to trace the three companies back. It quickly became clear that the three companies belong to the same network. Companies are not registered with the Chamber of Commerce. This is the basis for a collection company in the Netherlands.
How did the fraudsters contact potential victims?
By e-mail and by telephone, the fraudsters should have come into contact with their victims. You should immediately settle your alleged debt. In the e-Mails and calls, victims were asked to transfer the amount of money to an account, which was at British Trans Asia.
Both the Consumer Centre and the Gambling Authority warned against the aggressiveness and the skill of fraud. The invoice usually fits perfectly to the Person and the type of data acquisition. It is striking that it affects not only gambling, but also travel expenses. In the last case, victims were selected who had travelled a lot-in part even the destinations were to have been compared.
Do not make payments
The scammers know that many people initially react very quickly out of fear. The letters therefore threaten with sensitive fines or bailiffs. Despite the threats, both authorities gave the recommendation not to settle an invoice. It does not matter how often the debt collection agencies ask, or how aggressively the E-Mail or the call should sound.
If there is any uncertainty about the legality of a letter of formal notice, you should first try to contact the collection office and explain the specific case. If there are still ambiguities, you can also contact the Consumer Centre directly – it will then give your assessment of the Situation and bring more clarity to the matter.
Funny idea – Online Casinos with collection agencies
There are always new scams so that either money is collected or malicious software is installed on the Computer. A bit funny is the idea to send bills with online gambling debts. After all, most Online Casinos use payment providers, which debit directly from the respective accounts, or where you enter Prepaid Codes. Only a few Online Casinos offer, for example, the deposit via direct debit. There have been repeated incidents in the past that players deposited money, which they did not have. The money was never posted to the gambling provider’s account.
In the past, players had used direct debit to cheat the Casinos. At the time, gambling providers were unable to do much to get their money back. In the end, the direct debit procedure was almost completely banished from the best online casinos.
It is therefore not quite understandable for me how one comes up with the idea that gambling providers are now using national collection agencies. In such a case, invoices would have to be generated by the payment providers or credit card institutions – where payments to gambling providers may be listed.
Although the idea of fraudsters is certainly not bad, since players usually have many transactions on and off the account and the overview can be lost quickly. Nevertheless, the fact remains that these invoices are usually directly debited from the account. So this kind of fraud is funny. However, consumer protection centres and the Gaming Authority would not warn against harm or at least panic.
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