3.2 million on fake casinos. How online casinos cheat!

[Cloned Boy]

Fake Casino: How DevNull Stole Millions from Players Around the World.

What started as an attempt to escape poverty with code turned into one of the largest online fraud schemes of recent years. This story is not just a confession, but an expose: from the first Bitcoin payments to anonymous threats, fake streamers and a "jackpot" that turned out to be the beginning of the end.

DevNull created an entire empire: fake casinos, sophisticated "planting" algorithms, tens of thousands of victims, millions of euros in accounts. But behind every click were real people. And real tragedies.

In this topic:

• How does a fake online casino scheme work?
• Why Players Believe Fake Streams and "Reviews"
• What Happened To The Streamer Who Won The Impossible Jackpot
• Who is CodeBreaker and how did he ruin the entire operation?
• How much does silence cost… and how much does conscience cost?

This story is a warning. Easy money on the Internet almost always costs too much.

Important: All information is for educational purposes only.

Stealing $50 million online is easier than you think. Especially when the victims give you the money themselves and even thank you for it. My name is DevNull, and for three years I managed the largest network of fake casinos on the Darknet. Now I am sitting in a small cafe somewhere on the other side of the planet, drinking coffee and watching ordinary people go to work. They do not know that the man at the next table once ruined the lives of thousands of people like them.

But the real price of this money was much higher. Three people are already dead, and I know that I can be next. I am not writing this confession for forgiveness. There will be no forgiveness. Not from the victims, not from former partners, not from the special services of three countries. I am writing because the truth must be told. Because behind the beautiful interfaces and shiny promises of easy money, there is a machine devouring human lives.

It all started in 2017, when I was 22. I was a fourth-year student at the cybersecurity department of one of the technical universities. I won’t say which one, too many traces could lead back to me. I will only say that it was Eastern Europe. The post-Soviet space, where talented programmers earned pennies. And corruption was the norm of life. Since childhood, I was drawn to computers. At 14, I already knew three programming languages.

At 16, I built my first server from junk, at 17, I hacked the university’s local network simply out of curiosity. I didn’t steal, I didn’t harm, I just wanted to understand how everything works. But when the dean called me into his office and offered to solve the problem, I understood a simple truth for the first time. In our world, everything is bought and sold. I graduated from university with honors, but I didn’t find a job in my specialty. Or rather, I did.

They offered $300 a month for a system administrator position in a local IT office. This money was barely enough for a rented room and food. And BMWs and Mercedes flashed around, those who knew how to make money. The first time I went to the Darknet out of pure curiosity. I installed Tor, set up a VPN, studied forums. At first, I just read. About how to bypass blocking, how anonymous payments work, how underground markets are organized.

It was scary and fascinating at the same time. I pulled off my first gray scheme by accident. I saw a request on one of the forums. They needed a parser of data from open sources. The simplest task for a programmer of my level. The customer paid in bitcoins, did not require any documents. I wrote a script in 2 days and received $500. More than in 2 months of official work.

Gradually, the number of orders increased. Bots for boosting views. Scripts for automatic account registration. Parsers of personal data from social networks. I told myself that this was not a crime, just a gray area. That I did not steal or kill, I just wrote code. By the end of 2018, I was already earning more than a thousand dollars a month. I rented a normal apartment, bought a powerful computer, and began to study more serious technologies.

I mastered anonymous networks, learned how to set up servers in different jurisdictions, and figured out cryptocurrency mixers. My reputation in narrow circles grew. The nickname Def Null began to mean quality and reliability. I never screwed over customers, always delivered work on time, and knew how to keep quiet. In a world where every second person is a potential snitch or scammer, this was worth a lot. In the fall of 2019, I received a message that changed my whole life.

A contact appeared in the encrypted chat. He knew more about my work than a random customer should know. What’s more, he knew my real name. “Hello, Dev Nool, or whatever your real name is? We have an offer, a serious offer for a serious programmer. Ready to move to the next level.” My first reaction was fear. Someone had broken through my anonymity, and I was impressed. I

replied, “Depends on the offer. We’re creating a product for the entertainment industry, we need a technical leader. Salary? From $10,000 a month plus a percentage of turnover. Interested? $10,000 a month.” It was more than I’d earned in an entire year in my official job. Of course, I understood that the entertainment industry in our context could mean anything, but greed turned out to be stronger than caution. “Details?” I replied.

Online casino. Full development and support cycle, server part, interfaces, payment systems, security systems. Work in a team of professionals. Everything is clean and anonymous. Casino. Nothing illegal, at first glance. What do they want from me? Meet in an encrypted voice chat tomorrow at 8 p.m. Bring a summary of your technical skills. We'll tell you the details. I didn't sleep that night. I walked around the apartment, smoked one cigarette after another, thought.

On the one hand, huge amounts of money and the opportunity to do really complex technical tasks. On the other, it's unclear what exactly they meant by a casino. But in the morning I realized that the prospect of earning serious money was stronger than any doubts. Exactly at eight o'clock in the evening the next day, I went into the specified chat. The voice in the headphones was changed by a modulator, but the person speaking was clearly educated, with a technical background.

"Welcome to the DevNull team. You are now part of a project that will revolutionize the online gambling industry." Little did I know that three years later, this project would truly revolutionize my life. Only not in the way they promised. But then, on that autumn evening in 2019, I simply said – I'm ready. Only in the second month of work did I realize that we were not the only ones on our servers. And that our servers were being watched by people who were better off never meeting? The first task was simple.

Create a copy of a popular European casino. An exact copy. The same fonts, the same colors, the same navigation. The only difference is the domain and payment details. "People are attracted to the familiar," they explained to me in the chat. They see a familiar interface and relax. The team turned out to be larger than I expected.

Eight people, all with a technical education, all from the post-Soviet space. We knew each other only by nicknames, no one knew our real names. We communicated only through encrypted channels. No video calls, no real meetings. Maximum anonymity. It took two weeks to create the first casino. I set up servers in three jurisdictions, set up protection, wrote the game logic. The hardest part was in the game algorithms.

No one should win more than the deposit, Tech instructed. The maximum is small amounts for the illusion of fairness. I wrote an algorithm that analyzed each player. The system allowed beginners to win 20-30% of their first deposit so that they would believe. Regular players occasionally got small amounts, but large wins were completely excluded. All the machines worked not by chance, but on pre-written scenarios. Beautiful animation, sounds of winning, but the result is predetermined.

First launch. November 15, 2019. A person under the nickname Trafik bought a database of 5,000 email addresses of players from Germany, Austria, Switzerland. The mailing went out at night. Bonus 100% on the first deposit. The first player is a German from Dusseldorf, he topped up his account with 200 euros. He played for half an hour, won 60 euros. He tried to withdraw. The support explained about wagering the bonus with a coefficient of 35.

After 2 hours, the German lost all 260 euros. By the end of the first day, there were 30 registrations, deposits of 4200 euros. 0 paid out. The following months passed in a blur. By December, we had 3 casinos, 2400 players, a turnover of 340 thousand euros. My income was 28 thousand dollars per month. I bought a new car, moved to an expensive apartment.

I told my friends that I worked remotely for a Western IT company. But the worst thing was how quickly I got used to it. To letters from deceived players, to reports of drains, to the fact that other people's problems became just numbers. Our SMM set up content production, YouTube channels with reviews of honest casinos, fake streams with fake winnings. I wrote a separate logic for the actors, where big winnings were possible.

Viewers saw a streamer bet 100 euros and win 5 thousand. By the spring of 2020, we were running a network of 12 casinos. My income exceeded 50 thousand dollars a month, but at night I read letters from players. A man lost money on his wife's operation. A student lost her scholarship for a semester. A pensioner lost his entire life's savings. In May, the first incident occurred. A programmer from Munich suspected something was wrong, analyzed our code and wrote an investigation on the forum.

"We have a problem," the analyst said. "In a couple of days, we will be exposed." In 48 hours, we moved everything to new servers, changed domains. 1,200 players lost access to their accounts and 240 thousand euros in balance. "Normal operating costs," Tech commented. But that's when I started noticing oddities in the server logs. Suspicious requests, port scanning, studying databases - too professional for lone hackers.

And then one of our fake streamers turned out to be not as fake as we thought. One famous streamer worked for us for three months. A large channel, 80 thousand subscribers, daily broadcasts with games in our casino. Viewers believed him because he looked like an ordinary guy who just likes risk. Only in June 2020, I realized that he was not an actor.

It all started with a technical glitch. During another stream, a special account with inflated winnings glitched. Instead of a rigged win, the system gave him a real result - a loss of 500 euros. A normal actor would have stopped the broadcast, contacted us, solved the problem. But he continued to play. And not just play. He replenished the account with his own money. Real money. I watched through the admin panel in real time. The guy bet from 50 to 100 euros.

Lost, got angry, replenished the account again. In an hour, he drained more than a thousand euros. His own money. "We have a problem," I wrote in the general chat. "He plays for real." "So what?" the tech replied. "Let him drain it." More money in the common pot. But I knew it meant we had lost control. This streamer was an addicted player who accidentally fell into our scheme and was now advertising a casino. Worse, if he was a real player, sooner or later he would try to withdraw a large sum.

And when he realized that the withdrawal was impossible, he would start digging. The guy had 80 thousand subscribers, One revealing video. And our scheme would burst. And then what I feared most happened. On June 23, our streamer won the jackpot. 50 thousand euros. My system failed and the streamer received a win that should have been impossible.

The withdrawal request came in half an hour later. The team gathered for an emergency meeting. "We pay," Tag said immediately. 50 thousand against the reputation is pennies. Moreover, it is the best advertising we can get. And we paid. The streamer got his money, posted an enthusiastic video. It gave so much trust among the audience that we could not even imagine. But it was this success that destroyed us.

A month later, I noticed something odd in the server logs. Someone very professionally scanned our ports, studied the structure of the databases, looked for vulnerabilities. And then a codebreaker appeared. A message came in a private chat. "Hi, DevNull. I think we should talk." He knew the details of our infrastructure, the amounts of turnover, and even my main nickname. "About what?" I wrote. "About the fact that you are playing on someone else's field. Your success has attracted the attention of people who do not like competition."

The codebreaker explained about the group that controls a significant part of illegal gambling in Europe. Territories, percentages, work permits. The price for solving the problem is 30% of the income. In return - quiet work under protection. And if we refuse? In a month, your servers will be down, and you will be on the Interpol lists. The tech decided to ignore the threats.

The Internet is a free territory. The first attacks began a week later. Before the doses on the servers, our domains were blacklisted by antiviruses. We lost half our audience in two weeks, but the real blow came on August 5. DevNull. “We have an offer you can’t refuse,” he wrote. The next messages came at intervals of several minutes.

“We know about your scheme from the very beginning, the team composition, income, technical implementation.” Then came the photos. “My house,” “My car,” “The cafe where I had breakfast.” All without signatures, but the message was clear. Two options. First. Work, but share information with us. About clients, partners, technologies. In exchange for protection. And the second? The second option in your photos.

48 hours to decide. But the worst was yet to come. What I learned the next day turned everything upside down. Looking through the server logs, I noticed strange queries to the database. Someone was regularly downloading financial reports and client data, and doing this from an account that only had access to analytics. I delved deeper into the investigation. It turned out that our analyst had been leaking data to third parties for the past six months.

Via a separate encrypted channel, server log screenshots, financial reports, customer data — everything was going to an unknown recipient. Even internal team discussions were somehow leaking to this contact. I got it. We were being leaked from within from the very beginning. “Guys,” I wrote in the general chat, “we have a rat.” The reaction was immediate. The analyst disappeared from all chats five minutes after my message, just disappeared, as if he had never been there.

“Oh, shit,” Tech wrote. “How much could he have leaked?” “Everything,” I replied. “Absolutely everything.” Tech made the decision for everyone. “We’re folding. Immediately.” The next 72 hours were the most stressful of my life. We launched the emergency evacuation protocol that we had developed at the beginning of the project but hoped never to use.

All servers are offline, all domains have been transferred to automatic deletion. Databases are encrypted and destroyed. Even our chats were erased by special bots that overwrote the data several times. The money was evacuated through a network of cryptocurrency mixers. Each bitcoin passed through at least seven different services before reaching the final wallets. The tracks were lost forever. My share was $3.2 million. More than I could spend in my entire life.

But this money smelled of blood. The blood of people who believed beautiful sites and lost everything. On August 8, Tech wrote the last message. "Good luck to everyone. I don't know anyone else." After that, the team fell apart. Everyone disappeared in their own direction. I bought documents under a new name from one of the Darknet suppliers. Quality documents, a passport, a driver's license, even a certificate of no criminal record. A complete legend for the beginning of a new life.

On August 12, I boarded a plane. I won't say where, but it was a country where they don't extradite you on Interpol requests and where you can live comfortably on passive income from cryptocurrency investments. The first few months I lived in constant paranoia. Every stranger on the street seemed like an agent. Every phone call was a potential threat. I changed hotels every few days, used only cash. Avoided CCTV cameras.

But gradually the fear receded. News from the old world came rarely and fragmentarily. Through acquaintances on the Darknet, I learned that two of our team had finally been caught. Those and the person responsible for finances were caught trying to cash out large sums in Europe. And the rest are nowhere to be seen. Either they managed to escape, or they made a deal with the secret services. As for our traitor analyst, he also disappeared. But I suspect that his disappearance was more final than ours.

Now 3 years have passed. I live quietly, inconspicuously. Officially, I work as an IT consultant in a small local company. The salary is symbolic, but it creates a legal income history. The real money is in cryptocurrency wallets scattered across a dozen blockchains. Every month I spend no more than a thousand dollars. Exactly as much as a local programmer can afford. Sometimes I read news about the fight against illegal casinos. The amount of damage, the number of victims, the successes of law enforcement agencies.

These reports also mention our scheme. As one of the largest cyber frauds of recent years. Officially, we stole 47 million dollars from players from 15 countries, unofficially much more. Many victims never went to the police, embarrassed to admit their addiction to gambling. A man who lost money on his wife's treatment.

A student who lost her scholarship. A pensioner who lost his life savings. Thousands of people whose lives we ruined for the sake of numbers on a screen. Money doesn’t bring peace. Every dollar reminds me that I’ve become part of a machine that devours human lives. I’ve tried to do charity anonymously. I’ve transferred money to funds to help gambling addicts. But it doesn’t help me sleep peacefully. Why am I writing this confession? Maybe to ease my conscience.

Or maybe just because silence kills me from the inside. If you’re reading this story and thinking about creating something similar, don’t do it. The money will run out, your reputation will be restored, but the ruined lives of people who just wanted a little thrill will forever remain on your conscience. Beautiful interfaces, professional tech support, fake reviews – all of this is just a wrapper for a machine that turns human hopes into scammers’ bank accounts.

Behind every click is a real person with real problems and dreams. And there is no amount of money that would be worth destroying these dreams. I close my laptop and leave the cafe. It is an ordinary day outside, ordinary people are going about their business. None of them know that a man who stole millions of dollars and destroyed thousands of lives passed by. But I know. And I will always know. The story ends here. DevNull disappears into the crowd.

Leaving only these lines as a reminder that in the world of digital technologies, the human price of success is sometimes unbearable.