Russian Officials Are Blocking Online Casinos Left and Right

Last week, Roskomnadzor, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, went on a banning spree. They blocked over 1,800 casino sites, including some crypto-friendly casinos.

This data was unveiled by a gambling magazine called Betting Business Russia (BBR). According to their report, the Russian agency blocked all of these gambling sites in a period spanning over just one week (from April 8th to 14th).

It’s no secret that Russia is strict with its online gambling operators, but what could cause such a massive banning spree?

Well, as it turns out, the agency didn’t ban legitimate sites. Instead, they “cleaned” the internet of fraudulent mirror casinos. The so-called “mirror” casinos use content from other legitimate websites, and literally copy/paste it on their platform.

The most “popular” copies

The most mirrored website was Russia’s fan-favorite sportsbook, Fonbet; a total of 298 domains copied the content of this betting platform. On the other hand, the most copied cryptocurrency operator was 1xBit, registering 53 copies. Additionally, another 172 sites received a ban without even offering gambling services. However, they had gambling-related content, manly articles and guides about casinos, betting platforms, and so on.

As we said before, Russia holds a firm grip on its online gambling industry. But no one expected such a high number of fake gambling sites. Unlike most countries across Europe, Russia only allows land-based casinos in four regions (Kaliningrad Region, Primorsky Region, Altai, and Krasnodar). This is a similar system to the one in the US, where cities like Las Vegas and Atlantic City can offer gambling.

But it seems that online gambling is a little bit harder to control.