| Virtual Piracy Part One
Have you ever walked out of a department store, the proud owner of a 35" Sony television wondering if your new pride-and-joy was really nothing more than a cheap imitation - a Sony shell with the guts of a lesser brand?
Of course not. You know that these stores run a legitimate business and would never risk their reputation to make a few quick dollars.
The same assurance should never be associated with online gambling. It's too easy to open up shop online, defraud your customers, disappear, get a new URL and begin the cycle all over again. While this may sound outlandish this sort of thing happens every year leaving thousands of players out in the cold.
One of the most common fraudulent practices mastered by unscrupulous online gambling sites involves simple deception via the theft of materials from legitimate, proven sites. Graphics, general design, HTML, even banners can all easily be copied and used to create a professional-looking shell for a rogue site. These rogues know that a typical player makes their decision to gamble online before ever even visiting the site. They also know that if they get them through their virtual doors, they have to overcome the player's instinctive mistrust of both the Internet and gambling. To do this, they have to look safe.
To achieve this feat without having to spend thousands of dollars in design (after all, if exposed they may have to morph within only a few weeks) they simply copy what they like from other sites and put out their virtual shingle. Some sites even go as far as making exact copies of the winners pages and testimonial pages of legitimate sites, thus making themselves appear to be great sites loaded with thousands of happy players. Only a player who is intimately familiar with the "host" or original site, would notice the scam.
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