With college football bowl season underway, Missourians are being warned about illegal betting sites posing as legitimate operators.
Jack Cardetti with the Sports Betting Alliance told Missourinet that these companies are still active in Missouri.
“They’re trying to attract Missouri customers,” said Cardetti. “And quite frankly, customers are going to have a lot less safeguards and recourse if something goes wrong, if they continue to place the bets with those illegal operations.”
Law enforcement and consumer advocates like the Better Business Bureau have recently warned how unregulated betting operators, such as Bovada, Stake, and MyBookie, put consumers at risk.
Cardetti told Missourinet that legal betting sites require age verification and have safeguards designed to protect vulnerable users.
“Unfortunately, with the illegal offshore websites a lot of times that’s quite frankly, a joke,” said Cardetti. “They don’t require sort of the age gating. And quite frankly, if you are to win off one of those websites a lot of times, they don’t actually send the winnings out and then the customer is left with little, if any, recourse.”
Cardetti said if someone unknowingly uses an illegal site and loses money, they can do a couple of things.
“First and foremost, if you contact the Missouri Gaming Commission, they take complaints about that and then you should also talk with the Missouri Attorney General’s consumer hotline,” said Cardetti. “They do take complaints like that when people have been defrauded in the marketplace here in Missouri.”
To avoid scams, Cardetti recommends visiting the Missouri Gaming Commission website, where you’ll find the full list of licensed and regulated sports betting operators.
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