Casino-goers on the Gulf coast are being warned about e-mail online sportsbook scams. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

A new scam is reportedly targeting US casino gamblers on the Gulf coast, though as far as scams go, there is nothing particularly creative about it. Then again, sometimes the simplest lies are the most effective.

According to Will Polston of Fox 10 News in Biloxi, Mississippi, scammers are trying to get people to sign up for non-existent online sportsbooks by offering seemingly juicy incentives.

Golden Nugget General Manager and Vice President Chett Harrison said his casino has sometimes been the lure; one scam site offered its targets $1,500 in Golden Nugget vouchers. The vouchers, of course, did not exist.

Harrison gave the age-old advice: ”If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”

One usually reliable way to weed out scam e-mails is to look at the sender’s e-mail address, which will generally be completely unrelated to the supposed gambling site, or at least have obvious misspellings. But Harrison said it’s not always as easy as it used to be.

I couldn’t even tell the email address was different”

“It’s difficult. I’ve looked at some of them that I couldn’t even tell the email address was different until I slowed down to check it,” said Harrison.

Harrison added that in Mississippi, specifically, online sports betting is illegal, so any e-mail that offers incentives for signing up for an in-state site is clearly a scam. He also said that any legit online sports betting operator will require customers to use an app, though that is not necessarily true – plenty of operators allow betting right on their websites (though they may require a phone for geolocation purposes).

For people in Mississippi, Harrison concluded that the safest thing is to gamble in person at a casino. Of course, as the GM of Golden Nugget, he is incentivized to encourage that. When it comes to avoiding online gambling scams, though, he’s not wrong.