The president of Coljuegos, Marco Emilio Hincapié, has filed a complaint with the Office of the Attorney General against five people who, through alleged witchcraft, defrauded foreign citizens with the false promise that they had won the Baloto lottery.
The ring posed as witchdoctors and used artificial-intelligence-generated videos of Baloto draws to extract large wire transfers from victims contacted on social media. It is the first criminal referral the regulator has brought against an artificial-intelligence-enabled lottery scam
The scheme had a clear sequence. The defendants contacted foreign nationals through social media with an offer of witchcraft assistance to win the Colombian lottery, then organised virtual sessions in which a self-proclaimed witchdoctor delivered a set of “lucky numbers” to the victim.
The criminals asked for transfers to Colombian bank accounts on the stated pretext of buying Baloto tickets on the victim’s behalf. Once the money had arrived, they produced an artificial-intelligence-generated video of the draw in which the winning numbers matched those given by the witchdoctor, and asked for further transfers — in some cases of as much as US$3,000 in the name of Coljuegos itself — supposedly to pay taxes and release the prize. According to the regulator, some victims transferred as much as US$21,000 before realising no prize existed.
Hincapié framed the referral as both an enforcement step and a consumer-protection warning. “We have filed the corresponding complaints so that the authorities can act against these mafias. We want to remind the public that, in case of any doubt, it is best to go directly to the game operator or, failing that, to our agency”, he said in the Coljuegos press release.
He stressed that legitimate Baloto prizes are paid only by the authorised operator, that no legitimate prize requires an advance payment, and that enquiries about a supposed prize should go to the regulator’s official channels rather than to contacts made through social media. “It is important to remind bettors that those who pay the prizes are directly the operators of the games, not our agency”, he added.
The warning comes as online betting now accounts for 47 per cent of the Colombian gambling take, with Baloto at seven per cent, a digital expansion that Coljuegos has linked to the rise of illegal operators and criminal networks targeting unsuspecting users. Baloto is Colombia’s national lotto game, played both online and through physical retail points.
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The president of Coljuegos, Marco Emilio Hincapié, has filed a complaint with the Office of the Attorney General against five people who, through alleged witchcraft, defrauded foreign citizens with the false promise that they had won the Baloto lottery. The ring posed as witchdoctors and used artificial-intelligence-generated videos of Baloto draws to extract large wire transfers…
The post Coljuegos reports AI-generated witchcraft lottery scam in Colombia appeared first on G3 Newswire.