Although gambling in France is heavily regulated to protect players, many illegal sites remain available and strategies to evade controls are proliferating. L’Œil du 20 Heures and the Investigate Europe consortium tracked these banned sites and revealed the very successful company behind them.
This text corresponds to part of the report transcript above. Click on the video to watch it in full.
Before every match of the French national team, bettors are faced with the same questions: what is the score for the Blues? Will Kylian Mbappe score a goal? Online betting sites attract millions of French people. However, many of them are illegal. L’Œil du 20 Heures investigated the activities of online gaming giant Soft2bet. Together with the Investigate Europe consortium, France Télévisions reveals practices that worry French authorities.
These are luxurious evenings organized by a gambling company to showcase its brilliant financial success. That evening, Soft2bet CEO Uri Polyavich celebrated the ninth anniversary of Soft2bet. “We are opening new offices on new continents with new licenses. Business is going very well“, he states.
From its headquarters in Cyprus, Soft2bet regularly launches accessible gaming sites in Europe. A press release in 2020 announced the creation of Frumzi. The site is not approved in France. In addition to sports betting, it even offers casino games that are banned in France. Therefore, it is not allowed in the country. However, it is clearly aimed at French players and contains messages such as: “Getting to Frumzi Casino from France is quick and easy.”
It was on this site that Remy Thomasen, now deeply in debt, spent crazy amounts, as we see from his bank statement for 2024. In just three days, he lost €4,000, or twice his monthly salary, even though he already had a personal loan to repay. “I was addicted, constantly charging my phone. I just did it day and night, hoping to win something. I didn’t win anything at all,” R.he says. He admits that he had “lost control“. Then he adds: “It drives you crazy.”
Remy Thomasen, aware of his addiction, nevertheless asked to be banned from playing on all legal platforms. But on Frumzi he had no problems logging in, since the site does not perform identity verification. There are also no restrictions on the frequency of bets. But first of all, according to many players and employees, it will be very difficult to return the amounts won. This is what a former Soft2bet casino employee anonymously explains. He was responsible for the French-speaking players. “The whole process of returning winnings is very long. The strategy is that a person with a gambling addiction will not be able to wait and will end up gambling again with his own money,” he explains.
Besides Frumzi, we found many other gaming platforms that Soft2bet never mentions. We have recovered hundreds of internal and confidential documents, bank transfers and administrative files. On your account statement, winnings from illegal sites are sent to Outono, the holding company of Soft2bet. Here it is about 600,000 euros. There’s 1 million euros. In total, almost 600 million euros were donated to the Soft2bet galaxy from illegal sites over four years.
The documents allowed us to link the company to 127 sites that are banned in France but intended for French players. Therefore Frumzi, as well as Only Spins or Rabona. What does the state do when faced with such practices? Management of ANJ, the National Gambling Authority, responsible for blocking illegal gambling, sports betting and casino sites. We have sent a list of 127 sites available in France that we have listed. Did ANJ suspect that all these sites were associated with the same company? “No, we have not found Soft2bet.“, admits Jérôme Labarbe, coordinator of the fight against illegal supplies at ANJ.
Since these 127 sites are accessible, is the government’s blocking efforts actually working? “Of course, this is a technical battle that we are fighting against illegal sites. To win this battle, ANJ must adapt” he then admits.
The task is very difficult, because as soon as the authorities manage to block one site, another one is almost immediately recreated, with a slightly different Internet address. This is called a mirror site. “They created a mirror site called m.frumzi-0064.com. If we block this site, tomorrow they will create a new site 0065, then 0066, 67, 68.“, explains Jérôme Labarbe.
We asked Soft2bet about each of our complaints, 13 pages of detailed questions. The company’s rebuttal is short but formal: “We take compliance, governance and responsible business practices very seriously.” But after submitting questions to Soft2bet, it is no longer possible to create new accounts from France on many of the illegal sites we have identified.