Alarm is sounding in Japan: promoters of illegal casinos take over the sites of cult anime
Tokyo-based animation studio Asahi Production issued an official statement on December 10, urging fans to be vigilant.
Instead of information about their favourite title, site visitors fall into the network of promoters of illegal iGaming operators. Attackers use fan nostalgia and search engine trust to old domains to promote online casinos.
The original domain was abandoned by copyright holders in 2019. Two years later, in 2011, it was bought by a third party registered in the city of Kumamoto.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case, but rather an established trend. Scammers are purposefully hunting for "dead" links to projects that were popular in the past. Among the victims of cybersquatters are already included:
- Kaitou Reinya anime website (released in 2010);
- The resource of the title "Rokka no Yuusha" ("Heroes of Six Colours", 2015);
- The domain of the mobile game "Blue Reflection Sun", whose servers were shut down quite recently - in 2024.
Risks for users At the time of writing, the captured sites continue to function. Representatives of the studio "Asahi Production" strongly recommend that users do not click on old links and in no case register on suspicious resources. Entering any personal data on such pages threatens to steal it and transfer it to fraudsters.
Mark Patterson is the news writer at CasinosInCanada who covers the latest developments in the iGaming industry, including casino launches, regulations, and market updates.
Scam.
I really don’t care. Who even visits websites anymore? Everyone’s on social media or streaming platforms. Websites are a thing of the past, like dinosaurs. They could run porn there and nobody would even notice.
Haha, not bad. Came to watch anime, walked away with a mortgage down payment)) Just kidding. But honestly, it’s smart, very targeted traffic, and schoolkids are hardcore gamblers.
Holy crap, this is ridiculous… I was literally just looking up info about “Heroes of the Six Colors,” thinking maybe they’d finally announced a second season (hope dies last, right?). I go to the site and BAM! “Spin the slots, make some cash.” I thought I’d caught a virus and almost reinstalled Windows out of panic. Absolutely wild. People really have no sense of what’s sacred anymore. This is a classic scheme called drop domains. SEO guys have been doing this for 15 years, nothing new. Old domains have backlink juice and Google trust, so they get repurposed for gray niches like casinos or adult content. The studio should’ve just renewed the domain, $10 a year. Their own fault for neglecting it.