In a first prosecution of its kind, a man was jailed a few days ago after being found guilty of using fraudulent identity cards, international passports and false utility bills to open numerous online accounts which resulted in him making almost $80,000 from online gambling.
Andrei Osipau, aged 35, had stolen other people’s identities in order to open online betting accounts so as to take advantage of the numerous bonus bets that were offered by certain companies. Osipau’s action is known as “Bonus Abuse” in the gambling industry.
Osipau evidently opened bank accounts under false names in order to transfer his criminal gains from the online betting account via online payment institutes. His arrest follows a joint investigation by Metropolitan Police Service Gambling Unit detectives and the UK Gambling Commission.
It was only after an online betting company realized that they had received two UK passports bearing different names with the identical image within 12 minutes of each other on 26 February, 2011, that the scam was identified. After reporting the scam to the Gambling Commission it was passed by them to the Gaming Unit for further investigation.
Although it was at first believed that the passports were sent from two addresses in Hove and Easbourne, it was later discovered that Osipau had masked his own IP address so as not to be discovered. Over 5,900 scans of identity cards, passports, bank statements and utility bills were discovered at Osipau’s address which related to people from Canada, Australia, the US, New Zealand and Europe.
After pleading guilty to various charges at an earlier hearing Osipau was sentenced to three years imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court.
