Scamwatch: Automated Trading Services

Recently a new ‘flavour’ of sports arbitrage scam has emerged: companies claiming to have robots that will execute your bets on your behalf.

I know, it sounds silly when it’s put like that. It’s hard, without laughing, to imagine robots sitting at a desk placing bets. Although this image is a parody, you’d do well to keep it in mind when confronted with any person, company or website that tells you they have an automated betting solution…

The 2 most prominent outfits currently operating this scam are called sportarbs.com and quartadimensia.com

Both are classic Ponzi schemes.

In this case they are using the lure of sports arbitrage with the idea of ‘automatic betting’ to create the dream of ‘automatic risk free profits’. This appeals to people’s greed and willingness to believe.

The simple fact is that bookmakers impose limits on individual accounts; in the vast majority of cases the largest bet any single account can place will be $1000; given this, how do you think they are able to place bets for multiple users if they are using just one or even a few in-house accounts?

Think about the funds administration issues..

If you invest $1000 then how do they allocate this money amongst the bookmakers to ensure that there are funds available for the trades you wish to place? Indeed, once the $1000 has been allocated across several accounts, it becomes impossible for you to place a $1000 trade…

These are just a couple of glaring issues; there are many more…

Think about why they need YOUR MONEY if they have a robot that can place arbs all day and night..

Why would they be happy with just a 25% or 30% share in the profits when they could have 100% ?

Why is your money, which costs them 70% or 75% of the profit, more attractive to them than a bank loan which would cost them just 10% over a year?

The sites and their marketing is well-thought out and I expect that it is quite convincing to anyone who has little or no experience with sports arbitrage. However, there is no doubt that their true business model is that of a Ponzi scheme.