‘Your account will be blocked within 48 hours unless you confirm your details.’ Safeonweb flagged emails of this kind on 8 October 2026, sent in the name of itsme. Nothing stops the same wording from carrying a Belgian casino’s logo tomorrow. That is how online casino scams work: they borrow a name you already trust.
This is not a guess. On the blacklist published by the Belgian Gaming Commission, which I went through on 26 October 2026, 45 blocked addresses reuse the name of a brand licensed in Belgium. Thirty-four of them were added in 2026.
My view fits in one sentence: the fake site is only the bait. What the fraudster is after is your login, and once he has it, the contracts of Belgian operators leave the loss with you. I read those of the eight casinos I have audited to check.
Three habits stop most of it: look the casino’s address up in the official register, never log in through a link you were sent, and distrust any reset email you did not request. The detail follows, figures and clauses included.
Fake online casino: ten Belgian brands on the blacklist
The method is easy to repeat. I took the 915 named addresses on the Commission’s list and looked in each one for the name of a brand on the Belgian licence register, casino or betting. Ten brands stand out.
| Brand copied | Blocked addresses | Examples found | Licensed site on the register |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scooore | 15 | scooorecasino-be.com, scooore-be.com | scooore.be |
| Magic Betting | 9 | magicbetting-casino.com, magicbetting.org | magicbettingcasino.be |
| PepperMill | 6 | peppermillcasino-be.com, be-peppermill.com | peppermillcasino.be |
| Star Casino | 6 | starcasino-belgium.com, starcasinobe.com | starcasino.be |
| betFIRST | 3 | betfirstcasino.org, betfirst.win | betssoncasino.be (formerly betFIRST) |
| Betcenter | 2 | betcentere.com, betcentercasino.org | betcenter.be |
| Ladbrokes | 1 | ladbrokescasino.be | casinoladbrokes.be |
| bwin | 1 | bwincasinobelgium.com | bwincasino.be |
| Golden Palace | 1 | goldenpalaced.com | goldenpalacedice.be |
| Napoleon | 1 | casino-napoleon.be | napoleoncasino.be |
The same tricks keep coming back: a ‘-be’ tacked onto the name, a doubled letter, an extra word such as ‘casino’ or ‘belgium’, a .bet or .co.nl ending. The subtlest case is Ladbrokes: the blocked address simply swaps the two words of the Ladbrokes site I audited, and it ends in .be as well.
That an address copies a name does not, on its own, tell you what it did: the list records a decision, not a method. What it does show is which brands are worth enough to the people imitating them.
Blocking an address is not enough
The oldest case still on the list dates from May 2024, a copy of Star Casino. There are ten from 2025 and thirty-four from 2026, more than one in ten of the 280 addresses the Commission has blocked this year.
Each block shuts an address, not the operation behind it. Scooore shows how: fifteen copies, blocked in six waves between November 2025 and September 2026. When one address goes, a variant takes its place a few weeks later.
A brand in a hurry goes to court. At the end of September 2025, Versailles Casino obtained an order from the French-speaking enterprise court in Brussels against a copy of its site: internet providers must block it, and Google, Microsoft, Cloudflare and Meta must remove its links and adverts.
The blacklist is therefore a tool after the event. The useful habit starts from the other end, with the list of licensed Belgian casinos, so that you know where you are playing before you type anything in.
How does a casino scam reach you?
Three entry points come up in the sources I read. The first is advertising. PepperMill warned its players that fake adverts using its name and logo were running on Facebook and Instagram, leading to sites with no connection to it.
The second is the message, phishing in the strict sense. The fake itsme emails described by Safeonweb pull three levers: an account about to be blocked, a promised refund, details supposedly incomplete. They land well, because signing up at a casino with itsme is offered by every operator I have audited.
The third is the app. In the same warning, PepperMill said it did not offer one: any app in its name was therefore fake. Before installing anything, check on the site itself that an app really exists.
Hacked casino account: what the terms leave you to carry
I reread the terms and conditions of the eight operators I have audited, looking for three things: who must keep the codes secret, who must report a leak, and who bears the loss if a third party uses them. The answers are more alike than I expected.
| Operator | Codes kept secret | Reporting a leak | If a third party uses the account |
|---|---|---|---|
| PlayOne | Yes (art. 6.2) | Yes, by email | Operator disclaims, even without your knowledge |
| Oria | Yes (art. 3.1.2) | Yes, to support@oria.be | Operator disclaims (art. 6.2) |
| Fortuna | Yes, same clause as Oria | Yes, to support@fortunacasino.be | Operator disclaims (art. 6.2) |
| Golden Palace | Yes (art. 3.1.2) | Yes, to support@goldenpalace.be | Operator disclaims (art. 6.2) |
| BeCasino | Yes, email address included (art. 7.6) | Yes, ‘immediately’ | Operator disclaims (art. 7.6) |
| Madison | Yes (art. 2) | No written duty | Operator disclaims, ‘even if the user had no knowledge’ |
| Ladbrokes | Yes (art. 6.3 and 6.4) | Yes, ‘immediately’ | The player answers for the third party and indemnifies the operator |
| Betsson | Yes (art. 7.2) | Yes, ‘immediately’ | Operator disclaims, except for its own negligence |
All eight contracts put the use of your account by someone else on you. One reservation appears, at Betsson, for a leak caused by the operator’s own negligence. Everywhere else the rule is the same, whether you handed over your codes or they were taken from you.
Four operators go further. PlayOne, Oria, Fortuna and Golden Palace state in black and white that they are not liable for a payment made to a bank account that turns out to have been hacked. Once the winnings have gone to the correct IBAN, what happens next is no longer their concern.
The practical consequence is speed. Seven contracts out of eight ask you to alert the operator as soon as you suspect a leak, and three give the address in the clause itself. It is the only active duty they leave you, and the only one that lets the operator step in.
What a licensed casino does not send you unprompted
Five contracts describe what happens when you forget your password, and all of them go through email: a link at PlayOne and Golden Palace, a new password at Oria, Fortuna and Ladbrokes. That email only exists after you have asked for it. If it arrives without a request, treat it as a warning.
None of the eight contracts, on the other hand, contains a promise along the lines of ‘we will never ask for your password’. The missing sentence proves nothing either way: the only place to type your codes remains the site, opened by entering its address yourself.
The same goes for your documents. An identity document is not something you send in reply to a message: what genuine account verification at a casino involves happens on the site, once you are logged in. And money comes in through the cashier, for instance when depositing by Bancontact at a Belgian casino, never through a link you were sent.
Avoiding a fake casino site before you even log in
The Gaming Commission’s register lists, for every online licence, the exact address of the licensed site. That is the reference that tells casinoladbrokes.be and ladbrokescasino.be apart, where the logo, the colours and even the .be ending do not.
Once you have the right address, save it as a bookmark and always go through it. A link in a text, a sponsored search result or an advert is not a reliable route, even when it shows the right name.
The legal notices also help in telling a trustworthy casino from a site that imitates it, provided you check them against the register. A licence number is as easy to copy as a logo.
Already caught by a scam? The steps, in order
If you clicked, or worse, typed in your codes, the order of what you do matters. This is the order I take from Safeonweb’s advice and from the contracts above.
- Stop there. Do not fill in another field, and close the page.
- Change your password on the real site, opened by typing its address, and anywhere else you used the same one.
- Tell the operator at the address given in its terms and conditions, describing what happened.
- Call your bank if you gave out banking details, or Card Stop on 078 170 170.
- Forward the message to suspect@safeonweb.be, or a screenshot if it was a text, then delete it.
- File a police report if you lost money, and report the fraud to the FPS Economy contact point.
Forwarding is not a token gesture. According to the federal police, nearly 10 million suspicious messages were sent to that address in 2023, and more than 1.2 million dubious links were detected through them, then passed on to Google’s and Microsoft’s filters.
For a fake casino site, the Gaming Commission does not investigate complaints, but it draws up an official report with a view to blocking the address. Reporting it will not get you anything back, yet it may spare the next player.
Where this information comes from, and where it stops
Public documents, not expertise. I do not work for the police or for a cybersecurity service. This article brings together an official list, a register, contracts and published warnings, all dated in the sources. It replaces neither a lawyer nor your bank.
No institution has reviewed it. The Gaming Commission, Safeonweb and the operators named were not contacted about it. What is written here commits its author alone.
The brands copied are victims. A brand appearing in the table of blocked addresses means its name was borrowed, never that it did anything wrong. The eight operators whose clauses I quote all hold a Belgian licence.
Something has changed? The blacklist grows every month and contracts change without notice. Let me know if a figure or a clause no longer matches.
Online casino scams: your questions
Does the Gaming Commission’s logo on a page prove it is genuine?
No, an image is easy to copy. The Commission reserves its ‘Always Play Legally’ label for holders of a Belgian licence, but nothing stops a fake site from displaying it. What counts is the address in the browser bar, compared with the one on the official register.
I received a password reset email I never asked for. What should I do?
Do not click its link. Open the casino site by typing its address, log in as usual and change your password if in doubt. Then let customer service know: someone may have entered your email address or username.
Should I report a fake casino site to the Gaming Commission?
Yes, it helps other players. The Commission does not examine complaints about an illegal site, but it draws up a report used to add it to its blocking list. For the message that led you there, the right recipient remains suspect@safeonweb.be.
Can a site blocked by the Gaming Commission still be reached?
From Belgium, in principle no. The block is applied by Belgian internet providers and only covers the country. From abroad or through a VPN the address can still be reached, as the press pointed out about the copy of Versailles Casino.
Sources and limits
The documents read for this article, and what I could not check.
- List of illegal gambling sites blocked by the Gaming Commission, checked on 26 October 2026
- Gaming Commission registers of A+, B+ and F1+ licences, updated on 23 October 2026
- Safeonweb, ‘Beware of fake emails impersonating itsme®’, 8 October 2026
- Safeonweb, reporting an incident and forwarding a suspicious message
- Federal police (in French), why forward suspicious messages to suspect@safeonweb.be, February 2024
- PepperMill’s warning about fake adverts and apps
- L’Avenir (in French), court order obtained by Versailles Casino against a copy of its site, 1 October 2025
- Terms and conditions of PlayOne, Oria, Fortuna, Golden Palace, BeCasino, Madison, Ladbrokes and Betsson, read again on 26 October 2026; those of Betsson and Oria are cited without a link, as their terms make any link subject to written consent
- Matching blocked addresses to Belgian brands rests on domain names. An address can reuse a name without the list alone telling you how it was used.
- I opened no account, clicked no suspicious link and tested no report: nothing here describes first-hand experience.
- Betsson’s site blocks automated reading. Its terms were read from a copy saved the day before the check.
- The blacklist, the register and the contracts change without notice. The figures hold for the date given.
Three years in iGaming, focused on licensed casinos in Belgium. I write every CasinAudit page myself and check each figure against an official source.