Hetq investigation: Bulgarian businessman bought up Armenian domains to advertise casinos

A digital network has been uncovered in Armenia that was buying up expired domain names of government, media, and cultural resources to redirect users to illegal online casino platforms. As reported by Hetq.am, the organizer of the large-scale scheme turned out to be Bulgarian entrepreneur Miroslav Pavlov, who specializes in affiliate marketing in the gambling industry, the advertising of which is completely prohibited by Armenian legislation.

Journalists uncovered the scheme while studying a 2017 report by the human rights organization Freedom House, which mentioned the now-defunct portal parliamentmonitoring.am. Clicking the link led to a gambling site. A technical check showed that the domain is part of a network of dozens of intercepted addresses in the .am zone, united around the hub haykbet.am. The network monetized residual traffic from authoritative pages containing links to Wikipedia and other resources by attaching hidden identifiers and receiving commissions for player registration.

Pavlov holds the position of director at the company Perfomalis, which promotes online casinos. Investigators established that the affiliate identifiers from his past international projects fully match the tags on the Armenian resources. When contacted by journalists via LinkedIn, the businessman denied any connection to haykbet.am and threatened a lawsuit. Nevertheless, within 48 hours of the inquiry, the site began simulating access errors, although the traffic routing continued to function.

Cybersecurity experts point to the vulnerability of the local registration system: although the national .am zone is overseen by the Internet Society public organization, stripping rights from a foreign buyer requires lengthy legal proceedings. As a result, even portals of dissolved Nagorno-Karabakh agencies remain without proper protection, and the creators of parliamentmonitoring.am are forced to spend funds to buy back their own address.