Casino affiliates and affiliate managers need to be aware of a new scam threatening the online casino affiliate community.
There is an impersonator mimicking the web addresses of popular casino affiliate websites and trying to convince affiliate managers and operators that he is owed affiliate commissions. The casino affiliate community was first warned about this issue earlier this week by Casino Coins’ Nick Yap.
This scammer has posed as both a woman and a man, using the names Alyssa Jardine, Matt Reese and Ellen. Email has been the primary source of communication.
The fake URLs used by the scammer include latestsportbonues.com, thebestcasinosguide.com and casinoscashjourney.com. It’s likely you’ll recognize these as variants of popular casino affiliate websites. For instance, the misspelling latestsportbonues.com is just two characters away from Josh Chan’s Latest Sports Bonuses.
In fact, one spoof email even tried to convince recipients that it was from Casino Affiliate Programs, using the bogus name of Nick Brennan and the cleverly misspelled url casinoaffilliateprograms.com.
We spoke with Martyn Beacon at Affiliate Edge, one of several affiliate mangers who immediately warned Casino Affiliate Programs of this issue.
The impersonator sent Martyn two emails. While each one claimed to be an affiliate from a well-known site, the emails used a false name. Some of the emails also have links to legitimate Twitter accounts.
“I thought it could possibly be a genuine mistake from someone I knew, because the URL almost matched this affiliate’s site. But when I realized it was a scam, I tried to add this person on Skype, in the hopes of getting further information from them,” Martyn said. “They have not added me to Skype.”
Martyn continued, “I received the email about commissions twice, and it also appears that they’re asking for CPA deals.”
Affiliates, affiliate managers and operators should be aware that these impersonators have nothing to do with the companies they claim to represent.
If you receive an email that doesn’t seem right, it’s likely something’s wrong. Take careful steps to protect yourself, your business and your bank account. Always remember to never share sensitive information with anyone via email, especially someone you don’t know.
Have you been an attempted target of this scam? Please leave your comments below or in the forum and let us know.