Scheme traffic

Scheme traffic is a ticket to prison, in any jurisdiction. Regardless of whether gambling is legalized in the country or not.

Scheme traffic is not marketing. It’s a plain scam. Here’s an interesting fact: during all the time that the online gambling industry exists in the USA, only one affiliate has ever been arrested. American legislation makes it much easier to prosecute the agent (the entity that receives the deposits), rather than the affiliate. But when one “smart” affiliate had placed a scheme at his website, he was immediately arrested by American authorities.

Try offering scheme traffic to any affiliate program working on a regulated market, and you’ll get a hard no, and your details will be sent to law enforcement of the designated jurisdiction. Even some offshore casinos do it to avoid any risks with the law.

What’s most interesting is that, in general, SEO specialists know about it. Many of them are familiar with forums like GoFuckBiz or the notorious Crutop. Many had worked with such dubious topics as adult, illegal nutra, unlicensed software etc. Webmasters from these forums were regularly busted by local and international authorities, there are many stories like this online, you can look it up if you’re interested. Yet, people there were quite private, preferred to remain anonymous, and never attended any professional conferences.

The affiliate community is nothing like this. They never had to deal with law enforcement and know no fear. It’s quite common there for an influencer to explain how to work with scheme traffic in a YouTube video. It’s hard to say what hides behind such behavior: either it’s overconfidence multiplied by youth and lack of life experience, or blunt ignorance of the fact that in western countries nobody considers scheme traffic a genius marketing move; there, it’s a crime punishable by law. And if such a “speaker” gets arrested during his trip to another conference, that won’t be a surprise. He could have just as well shared case-studies and tips and tricks on how to steal people’s bank information.

Many of you have seen “The Wolf Of Wall Street”, a movie based on a true story about “groomers” who persuaded people to invest in high-risk securities from the over-the-counter listing issued by unsecured companies and promised them a 100% profit guarantee. In our case, “groomers” working with scheme traffic solicit people to invest in online casinos with a 100% profit guarantee. Do you think the FBI sees any difference here?

By the way, for your information, there’s no such thing as statute of limitations for scams in western, and especially American legislation. So your YouTube confessions about making money on scams can backfire in five, ten or twenty years.

The above-mentioned forum, GoFuckBiz, was mentioned in a book of a famous American journalist, Brian Krebs. The book is about cyber crime in the CIS region. However, things that were discussed at GoFuckBiz can’t even begin to compare with what is openly spoken about in the so-called “affiliate media” and YouTube channels.

Avoid scheme traffic

First of all, it’s a 100% immoral way of getting new players. Compared to traditional marketing methods, the player is used and manipulated, and doesn’t know what he’s being dragged in. Secondly, scheme traffic guarantees you problems with law, and not necessarily immediately. You can make money now and get arrested in five years.

Let’s talk about the Asian variety of scheme traffic called “Pig Butchering”. Scams like scheme traffic were not invented in the CIS region. At some point, it was heavily used in financial gambling by Israeli affiliate companies promoting binary options. This phenomenon got to such proportions that binary options as a product became illegal in a vast majority of countries, American authorities started the investigation and Israeli rabbis warned their congregations against associating with financial gambling in any way.

Scheme traffic from Asia is no exception. During COVID19 pandemic, unlike everywhere else in the world, Asian gambling operators lost their profits. As a result, a traditional scheme traffic evolved into something that is called “Pig butchering” in Chinese slang. Such scams started to emerge presumably in the Asian regions with multiple online gambling operators, such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, vastly controlled by Chinese owners.

The “Pig butchering” scam was developed for financial gambling products. One of the key differences between a traditional scheme traffic and its Asian modification is that the latter is directed not towards the usual brands, but the brands that were specifically created for the scam. Usually these are websites and apps that specialize in financial gambling. Sometimes such a scheme is used in classic gambling, too. The “engineer” can groom their victim for weeks and months.

Just like in classic scheme traffic, the groomer persuades the victim to make a deposit. However, the grooming process can take much longer. Such websites and apps allow the victim to win (close the deal with a profit) and even withdraw their winnings. This, plus persuasion of the groomer push the victim into making more and more deposits, later with loaned money. Finally, when the victim makes the biggest deposit, their account closes, their money disappears, and the groomer stops responding. Sometimes, the website or the app disappear as well.

The victims of the “Pig butchering” scam are lured in by the same tactics as in classic scheme traffic. Instagram profiles of “successful” personas target lonely people who miss communication. People with terminally ill relatives and financial difficulties are considered good targets. All in all, it’s just like scheme traffic but targeting bigger deposits. Very often, scam victims lose millions of dollars. A huge number of victims eventually commited suicide, unable to bear the financial burden of their debts.

As a response to this threat, many social organizations have emerged in the USA and Asia whose main goal is to track down scam organizers and pass their details to the law enforcement.

And of course, the official authorities of many countries are tracking down online scammers and sharing information with each other. At the FBI, there’s a special department called Internet Crime Complaint Center. It collects and analyses information about victims and organizers of the scheme traffic scams.

A 24-year-old Chinese citizen named Hong reported being kidnapped in Cambodia and coerced into a scam in the role of a “social engineer”. The kidnappers made him work for a lottery scam, targeting illiterate Chinese farmers.

The victim was forced to contact scam victims on QQ, a Chinese social media platform, build relationships, groom them, and then convince them to invest money in a lottery by downloading two apps: a legal lottery app and a fraudulent one created by scammers.

“I told them that our application can ‘hack’ the official lottery system. If you open both apps, we will make sure that you win by controlling the lottery from behind the scenes,” — he explained the specifics of his role. The only thing he wasn’t allowed to do is tell the victims that they will never be able to pick up their winnings or take back their money.

According to Hong, about 200 people worked for this company, and their success rate was pretty high — thousands of victims “invested” from $15,000 to $30,000 in a couple months.

“Ten to twenty people can get over $900,000 of profit” he says lowering his voice, presumably ashamed of being solicited into the industry that scams people and steals their hard-earned money.

How affiliates get scammed by scheme traffic organizers?

It’s wrong to think that scheme traffic organizers only target players. Affiliates get scammed by exactly the same tactics as players, with just a few modifications.

When players get scammed, a criminal game/casino operator is behind it; when an affiliate is the victim, the scam can be organized by unlawful advertising networks, affiliate programs or mobile application developers. That is, any of the third parties that can pull money out of the affiliate’s pocket to buy traffic.

Scams that target players and affiliates are very similar, with just a few differences. Their core element is the author of the scheme. For players it’s some kind of a “programmer in disguise” who learned how to “hack” online casino algorithms and now wants to share it with the players as the Good Samaritan. For affiliates, it’s a “secret affiliate guru” who found an excellent offer with a huge ROI potential and now wants to graciously share it with the world.

Here’s how the scheme works? Players are offered to make a deposit, spin the slots N times, in a particular order and, of course, in a particular casino, and the rain of money will fall upon their heads right that instant.

Affiliates are offered to make a deposit, too, select specific settings in a particular casino and according to a special “system”, exactly like the scammer tells them to do, and then receive their huge ROI.

For some reason, people who fall for such scams never ask themselves why a programmer who “hacked” a casino would share his secret with anyone.

Affiliates who fall for it never ask themselves why anyone who found a cool offer doesn’t work with it alone, but instead altruistically gives away his profits.

Lately, many affiliate teams create scheme subdivisions, targeting western countries as well. I suspect that the reason behind it is that it has become very complicated to get traffic from the traditional affiliate sources.

If people want to take such risks, especially in countries that actively track down and prosecute schemers, what can I say? Your freedom is yours to risk. If someone thinks it’s worth trying, they are welcome to keep their blissful delusion.