SOURCE: USA Today

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The fraudster then floods the poker forum of small-to-midsized websites with "players" in the form of bots.

These are compromised PCs loaded with poker-playing programs that play poker, but not necessarily well.

A human in cahoots with the crook then enters the same room as the bots to compete against sub par competition.

The odds are heavily in favor of the human, who wins the pot. The money from the losers is transferred to the winner — in this case, the fraudster.

Cybercrooks are going to elaborate measures in this use bots because it is difficult to transfer the money of a legitimate credit card account overseas. And there are still online payment processors that process online wagers — despite a recent crackdown on Neteller, a popular payment processor overseas.

"Money launderers are going to extra steps to move money because of the federal law," says John Pescatore, a security analyst at Gartner. "You have to get more creative to move money overseas. This is another way to cash out."

While large, established poker sites are good at electronically scanning for bots and for players who intentionally lose to a "designated" winner, small sites are not, says Joseph Kelly, a professor who specializes in online gambling issues at SUNY College Buffalo.

"The bots are prevalent," says Anna Calder, an online poker player from Canada, where such gambling is legal. "If you suspect you're playing a bot, you send an (instant message) and attempt to chat with them.

They usually don't reply, but some are programmed to respond, "I do not chat."

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