Illegal casinos hijack thousands of Dutch websites

At least 1,000 legitimate Dutch and European websites, many belonging to companies, charities and freelancers, have been quietly turned into shopfronts for illegal online casinos, an investigation by radio station BNR has found. The real figure might be over 8,000.

The sites have nothing to do with gambling, and their owners are usually unaware. Criminals either hack poorly secured websites and add casino pages, or buy up an organisation’s expired domain name and fill it with gambling content.

Because search engines already trust those addresses, the casino pages rank highly. Someone searching for an online casino may land on a seemingly reputable site before being redirected to an illegal operator.

BNR found gambling pages on an old domain once used by broadcaster and writer Wilfried de Jong, on sites formerly run by the liberal VVD party in Zeeland and Brabant, and on the website of a business lawyer, where at least 50 casino pages had been added.

The national gambling authority called it “a very big problem” and is working with SIDN, the body that manages Dutch internet domains, to shut down redirect pages, but the process is slow because there is no legal power to block the sites, which SIDN says it wants.

It can also do little about .com or .eu addresses, which fall outside SIDN’s remit, so it is hoping Google will step in. The search engine removes adverts for illegal casinos but leaves the sites and redirect pages in place.

The cabinet said in June it was drawing up new tools with the authority to tackle illegal gambling, including the power to block websites. Regulators have struggled to keep up, with more now being spent on illegal sites in the Netherlands than on legal ones.