When gamblers are trying to nail down a pick for a certain game or just want to change their betting fortunes, they all turn to a common source – sports handicapping services. Quite a few of these gamblers will look for free picks on the Internet, but others will pay money to get picks. The second group mentioned is putting a lot of trust in these handicapping services to deliver since they're willing to pay money to see the picks. Unfortunately, they don't always get good advice and, worse yet, they could get scammed in the process. Here are the things you need to look out for to avoid getting one pulled over on you by a phony handicapping service.
Forum Tricks
Since the Internet is becoming a bigger part of people’s lives these days, forums have increased in popularity by leaps and bounds. Sports betting forums are no different in this regard, and so lots of handicappers like to hang out on these to try and attract new customers to their service. The majority of these people are legitimate, but there are plenty of so-called handicappers that aren’t.
The way these con-artists operate is through the usage of delayed game picks and multiple forum accounts. The reason for the delayed game picks is because these people want others to believe that their fake service is picking winners all of the time. So they simply wait until the game is over, make an official-looking set of game picks, and do their best to convince forum members that their handicapping service did indeed make these picks.
Multiple e-mail accounts serve to create the illusion that everyone likes their service and has won lots of money through them. By simply signing up for several forum names, the assumed handicapper can create multiple posts commending the handicapping service from what looks like a neutral source.
Playing Both Sides
In the past, handicappers frequently scammed people by playing both sides of the fence in a game. This risky and immoral practice involves two methods:
- To pull off the first method, a person needs to own at least two different handicapping services. With one service, they will offer a pick on one team in the game. Then, using the other service, they’ll pick the other side to win the game which ensures at least half of the people are happy.
- The second way to play both sides is to split your customer base into two halves. After this is done, you simply give one pick to one half of the people and the other pick to the other half.
Luckily, the advent of the aforementioned forums has cut down on this practice since people can talk about their picks with each other and expose this fraud. But this practice still must be watched out for since the threat does exist.
E-mail Scams
E-mail fraud is becoming more and more common as criminals can make major money by fooling people with deceptive e-mails. Gambling is definitely one industry which has been severely affected by these e-mail scams since many criminals have posed as sports handicappers in order to get people's cash.
The most popular method fake handicappers use to fool gamblers through e-mail is by using a combination of free accounts and forums. The perpetrator will post a personal pick in a forum, then wait for the results. If the game is a success, they will send out e-mails to people bragging about the win, while at the same time advertising their phony service and picks. Even if the game loses, they can just go sign up for another e-mail account and repeat the process all over again.
