Polish Men Charged with Extortion of Online Casino

• Published: August 14, 2013
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Few people realize how much online casinos, and the online gambling industry in general, do in order to protect players from malicious third parties and how effective they are at it. Online casinos are responsible for your private information, and your money safe. Online casinos make it a top priority to ensure that your winnings and data remain out of the reach of anyone outside of their confidential operations. As in every industry, there are cyber criminals whom at times decide to terrorize anyone using the internet, and they also pick on online casinos as of recently. News broke that two European cyber terrorists attempted to extort the team at one of your favorite online casinos.

A Manchester-based gambling site was recently under the attack of cyber terrorists, two men were arrested and the case became of public knowledge. Apparently, the two men were attempting to extort money out of the casino. The online gambling venue was the renowned Club World Casino, and the two men were denied service due to fraud and fishy activity; they decided that this was enough reason to extort the casino and began blackmailing the online casino representatives. Their extorsion involved a 36-hour DoS attack against the casino on August 2nd, 2013, which prevented players from accessing the site.

The two individuals were arrested at Heathrow Airport in Great Britain, and they were cited to appear before an Uxbridge Magistrates Court who charged them with blackmail and one offense of unauthorized acts on computers under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act (this Act a real thing, we promise). The two men were identified to be Polish nationals: Piotr Smirnaw, 31, from Warsaw; and Patryk Surmacki, 35, from Szczecin. They were caught after American, Polish, and British authorities, including the Serious Organized Crime Agency, conducted a thorough investigation and confirmed the allegations.

“Extortion attempts involving denial of service attacks certainly aren't a new phenomenon. In the past there have been numerous cases of websites that have found themselves the victims of attempted blackmail by criminal gangs who threaten to bring down their website," Cluley continued: "Often such blackmailers will demonstrate their ability to flood a website with traffic from a botnet of computers, proving their ability to prevent genuine customers from reaching the site, in an attempt to convince their victims into paying large amounts of money," said security expert Graham Cluley.

All in all, the lesson to learn is don't extorsion an online casino, it only takes a few days to know who you are and where to find you. We are glad justice was done.