You are right, these are scams.
Many of these are automated clicks, no people at all. If you are lucky you will get some chinese folk who cannot read English.
These bulk traffic places are almost all representing two places in Canada I understand. There are no gambling websites this traffic passes through.
There are a few exceptions – they buy the raw traffic in Canada, pass the traffic through a slipshod banner farm, and declare it casino traffic. They cost somewhat more.
Please don’t throw away your money. If I was starting out, I would probably be most likely to pay a real SEO expert to fix me up.