How Money Laundering, Scams, and Espionage Hide in a Web Full of Casino Garbage

This report describes three overlapping threats hiding behind lookalike online casino and adult websites: (1) a massive ecosystem of illegal Chinese-language casinos used for gambling and money laundering ( >1.7M domains), (2) a growing network of scam gambling (‘scambling’) sites that rig games and block withdrawals, and (3) a smaller China-aligned APT (PeckBirdy) that embeds WebSocket-capable C2 infrastructure into decoy sites; the paper provides indicators (domains/IPs), hosting and registrar analysis, detection gaps (notably low VirusTotal coverage for some C2s), and practical defensive advice for triage and disruption.