Regulation

Fake ‘Tesco Casino’ Scam Exposes Illegal Gambling Ad Gaps

Vitne M �� Published 14 September 2026 �� Updated 14 September 2026

Tesco has reported an unlicensed online casino to City of London Police after discovering that its brand had been hijacked to promote gambling adverts on Facebook. The retailer’s move, confirmed this week, exposes a growing problem of household names being used without consent to lend false credibility to sites that hold no UK Gambling Commission licence.

What’s actually changed

The fake operation went well beyond simply borrowing Tesco’s logo.
The fake gambling operation used Tesco’s identity across its website and Facebook advertising, with a dedicated Facebook page promoting the casino before Meta removed the material following media inquiries.
The associated site, TescoSlots.com,
described itself as “the official Tesco casino” and claimed its slots were “laid out as clearly as the aisles at a Tesco Extra”, built on “the trust of Tesco, a FTSE 100 company with 107 years of UK trading history since 1919”.

Some of the false claims were more than cosmetic.
The site describes itself as the ‘official Tesco casino’, mentions Tesco debit cards and clubcard points, and offers a tiered loyalty system including ‘Everyday, Extra, Finest, and Clubcard Elite’.
That is despite the fact that
Tesco Bank closed its personal current accounts in 2021
, making the payment claims misleading on their own terms.

Crucially,
the operation has no licence from the Gambling Commission authorising it to offer gambling services in Great Britain.
Tesco is not alone:
it is the latest in a string of companies and sports stars, including Barclays bank and Lewis Hamilton, to have its image hijacked by unlicensed casinos advertising via Facebook and Instagram.

Unlicensed gambling websites also used images of athletes without consent, including Lewis Hamilton, Tyson Fury, Jude Bellingham and Bruno Fernandes, with one crypto casino using a lookalike of Erling Haaland in Norway kit.

Tesco’s response so far has been limited to reporting the issue.
The supermarket referred the matter to the National Cyber Security Centre and Report Fraud, the fraud-reporting service operated by City of London Police.
However,
police confirmed that they had received Tesco’s complaint, although it had not been passed to a police force for investigation “at this time”.

What it means for you

If you spot a casino advert or website using a familiar British brand, treat it with caution rather than reassurance. Several of the sites identified in this investigation rely on offshore paperwork rather than genuine UK authorisation:
several casino websites connected to the wider issue claim to hold licences issued outside Britain, with some citing Curaçao and Rainbet claiming licensing from Anjouan.
As this site has explained before,
holding an overseas licence does not provide permission to offer remote gambling services to customers in Great Britain.

That distinction matters practically. Sites operating without a UK licence sit outside GamStop, the Gambling Commission’s complaints framework and the Alternative Dispute Resolution process that legitimate operators must offer. If a deposit dispute arises with one of these sites, you have none of the usual routes to recourse that apply to a properly licensed UK casino. The presence of references to safer-gambling support on an unlicensed site’s page, as seen with mentions of GamCare-style guidance, should not be read as a sign of legitimacy.

The bigger picture

Regulators are aware of the scale of the problem but face real constraints in tackling it quickly.
Both the Gambling Commission and Advertising Standards Authority are aware of the spread of these advertisements, but the campaigns have continued, and the Gambling Commission has also previously criticised Meta over advertising for unlicensed gambling businesses.
Part of the difficulty is jurisdictional:
the regulator can pursue sites offering gambling illegally to consumers in Great Britain, although unauthorised use of corporate intellectual property falls outside its remit.

There is, however, a specific reform on the horizon that the regulator hopes will help.
The Commission is working with the ASA and expects additional powers from the autumn through the crime and policing bill, which it believes will strengthen its ability to disrupt illegal gambling websites.
Meta, for its part, maintains a narrower view of its own responsibility:
the company is understood to take the position that advertisers carry responsibility for complying with regulations in the markets they target.

For now, the episode is a reminder that a familiar logo or a well-known face in an advert is no guarantee of legitimacy. Checking for a genuine Gambling Commission licence number remains the only reliable way to know whether a casino site is playing by UK rules at all.

Sources

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