Will this well known betting tip scam fool you – variations of which still catch people out?
- Although there are many tipsters who attempt to provide genuine tips, there are some scams out there you need to avoid!
Can you spot the trick?
Let’s say you receive an e-mail purporting to contain a Cheltenham Festival betting tip that’s certain to come in?
- You don’t pay much attention to the e-mail, as it seems like a piece of spam. Later when you are watching TV you catch the end of the event the tipster predicted. In the back of your head you seem to remember the outcome might have been the same as the tip. You go back and check your e-mail, and the tipster got it right, but you don’t think much of it.
- You get an e-mail from the same sender with a betting tip for the Grand National. You still don’t think much of it, but this time decide to remember the tip to check it later. You check the result later, and the tip came in. He just got lucky, you say!
- 2/2 tips correct. After a few weeks, another e-mail with another horse racing betting tip drops in your inbox. Intrigued, you decide to tune in to the event the tipster bet on, and it wins! You are becoming tempted to bet some of your own money on these tips, if they keep coming.
- You keep getting e-mails every few weeks before an event, and later on that day the tip comes in. You start betting small amounts on each tip, and keep winning at your favoured bookmaker.
Have you spotted what has happened?
- After a short while, an e-mail comes in saying you will have to pay to receive further tips. Surely the tipster must be worth paying for, and you could make a fortune? You are about to pay – after all the tipster has got 100% of tips correct in row.
- Unfortunately, you have been scammed all along by the ‘tipster’. Can you spot this betting tip scam first?
Full explanation of how the scammer did it
- The ‘tipster’ sent say 10,000s of e-mails – some of which backed all the possible outcomes in the first event. You just happen to be in the group that the correct tip was sent to the first time.
- The second time, the ‘tipster’ e-mails only the group that he had previously sent the 1st winning tip to, and divides them into new groups backing each of the outcomes in the 2nd event.
- Again and again, the scammer repeats the process.
- Provided the ‘tipster’ started out with a sufficiently large number of recipients to begin with, to a certain number of people it will look like the ‘tipster’ got a large number of tips in a row correct from the start.
- The people who receive a wrong tip at any time no longer receive e-mails, and they probably didn’t think much of it. But to the group of people who got all correct tips, it will look like the ‘tipster’ is genuine.
- The ‘tipster’ hopes that a small percentage of people who got the large number of tips in a row correct from the start will sign-up to his ‘tipping service’ for a fee (which will be nothing more than a scam).
- There are many variations of this scam.
- Hopefully by fully understanding this betting tip scam explanation, you will be able to avoid such scams.
If you didn’t spot this betting tip scam, you were a victim of survival bias (you were only thinking of the people who made it through a selection process, and ignored those that didn’t).