INTERVIEW “Black” betting networks use online games for teenagers to hide, says ONJN head Vlad Soare
Vlad Soare, ONJN president. Inquam Photos / George Calin
For every legal gambling site operating in Romania, there are 50 illegal sites that “hunt players”. The methods of the illegal market have become more refined, says Vlad Soare, the president of the National Gambling Office.
GOLAZO.ro, the sports website of HotNews, published on Wednesday another episode of the “Illegal Betting Octopus” series. It is about the unprecedented expansion of “black” gambling, which does not pay taxes to the state and where players are not kept confidential and are not protected against abuse.
Worldwide, several recent, concordant studies estimate that 70% of wagered money uses these underground networks. In Romania, there are over 1,300 sites on the banned list.
Vlad Soare, the president of the National Office for Gambling, told GOLAZO that there were situations in which, after sending the notification, ONJN stopped checking whether the operators really blocked the respective sites. And some did not block them.
“The audit report highlighted the fact that, although the specialized department carried out checks regarding the compliance of the obligations by the Internet service providers in terms of restricting access to the sites included in the black list, these checks were not carried out with the necessary periodicity, even if the initial notifications were sent to the providers”, said Soare.
2025 saw an exponential increase in the number of illegal sites blacklisted: by October, more had already been collected than in all of 2021, 2022 and 2023 combined.
Despite the evidence of the explosion of the phenomenon, three of the known illegal platforms (NV Casino, Verde Casino and Vulkan Casino) are still online, available without any restrictions to the public in Romania, although the authorities say that they have also opened criminal cases.
GOLAZO.ro also requested information from DIICOT and the Police.
ONJN claims that, following recent legislative changes, it will be able to ask Google, Meta and TikTok to urgently block any promotion of illegal platforms. So far it hasn't happened/
From this year, software providers and payment processors have the obligation to detect, block and report the access of Romanian players to unlicensed platforms. Violation of these obligations constitutes a crime.
“A special case was that of the “chicken-road” game, apparently intended for teenagers, but which hid an illegal gambling platform. In this case, I notified DIICOT for the establishment of an organized criminal group. Also, in Prahova, following ONJN's support, the police searched people who organized fake raffles on Facebook”, explained ONJN head Vlad Soare.
The GOLAZO.ro article can be read here.
