RiceGum, Jake Paul And Many other YouTubers Promote Underage Gambling
It’s only been a couple of days into the new year of 2019, and there’s already news coming out about big YouTubers scamming their audience. What a great start to 2019! Back in 2016 Youtubers ‘Syndicate’ and ‘TmarTn‘ made many videos promoting a website called ‘CSGO’ Lotto. The website closed for good. This was a website where CSGO players could gamble their in-game weapon skins to win better-valued skins potentially. The site proliferated when YouTube videos went live of Syndicate and TmarTn regularly winning high valued skins. These videos gathered millions of views, and many viewers signed up to the site and deposited after seeing the potential to gamble up for better skins. What a nice coy way to get yourself a profit!
Whoops, it’s our site!
But it was discovered that the pair were owners of the site! Unsurprisingly, came a backlash from their fans as they did not state they owned the site. They just acted like they came across it and wanted to try it out for themselves. It gave the impression that their odds of winning are rigged and the pair both uploaded apology videos. Along with some tweets to try and win back the hearts of their fans who were lied to. They managed to dodge some hefty fines for lying, and now the hate has been gone for months.
Back in action
But now Youtubers RiceGum and Jake Paul have decided to fool their young audience. They have recently been promoting a site called ‘MysteryBrand’; the website seems to have a similar layout and style to an old CSGO skin website called ‘Skin Hub’ which could mean the owners have decided to make a new website (but that is just a theory).
On the site you deposit funds to open virtual ‘Mystery Boxes,’ the site features different priced mystery boxes with low valued items as Greys, then blue, Pink, Red, and Yellow as the highest value inside. Mystery Boxes first originated on eBay, YouTubers would buy these real-life boxes and unbox them on videos to show fans what they receive and would normally not contain the value claimed by the sellers.
Each box has different coloured items inside, and you can even, make your own. The lower, the value the bigger the chance of landing that item. Gold is the rarest and is difficult to win. When you open one of these boxes, an animation will play of all the items in the spinning across your screen and will eventually land on one of the things in the box. Once you win an item, you can either sell it for the set value price or cash it out and get the thing sent to you. When RiceGum and Jake Paul made videos promoting this website they were winning high valued pieces with some very low odds and had some very exaggerated reactions.
Just another affiliate scheme
The videos are stated as sponsored and have an affiliate code in the description. They try to convince their young audience to sign up with this code ( where they earn money for each signup). They are convincing underage kids to signup to a gambling site and depositing money which is so wrong. But the worse part is the whole website is a complete scam. I have seen hundreds of tweets and comments on their videos from upset fans claiming they have not received their winning items after waiting weeks.
Yet in the videos, they show their winning items arriving and showing them off to fans. The fact such big YouTubers would trick their audience into a scam is awful. I just loaded the website, and the top bar doesn’t stop with boxes being opened, I hope this website is finished soon. But it isn’t just two YouTubers promoting this scam!
There are hundreds of videos promoting this website including more big YouTubers and smaller channels. It’s a shame that YouTubers support underage gambling like this — all with exaggerated thumbnails. And of course the big offender, the affiliate links. Pewdiepie has recently made a video talking about the situation and shared his thoughts on the topic. He said ‘both Jake Paul and Rice Gum have young fans and promoting a gambling site is just a bad idea’ and said they both don’t care. I’m glad the biggest YouTuber on the platform has spoken on the subject and warned his viewers. He also showed a tweet from ‘Keemstar’ who exposed he was offered 100k to promote this website and turned it down.
Busted!
Since the website has been exposed some YouTubers have started deleted their videos promoting and showing off their winnings. One I found and did watch was from Uncle Romell. But you might recognize him from the channel TGF bro which has 4.5 million subscribers. He made a video promoting the site on his channel with 800,000 subscribers. The video has such exaggerated reactions when winning highly priced items. It even has a link to the website at the top of his description. But the video has now been taken down, but there is an original link on his Twitter account.
This story is huge and so much information is revealed online. I am shocked YouTubers are convincing their young audience to gamble, it is so wrong, and the site is a scam yet YouTubers still promote it. If you want an honest look at real casino deals, check out the section on our website where we provide only the fairest deals. What is your opinion on this?