A bombshell whistleblower report has rocked the online gambling industry, revealing how SoftSwiss—an ostensibly legitimate tech provider—has been facilitating an illegal online casino empire. At the heart of this operation is RevDuck, a shadowy network running illegal gambling sites such as Holyluck, Trueluck, and Kokobet. Despite the clear ban on unlicensed gambling in the Netherlands, SoftSwiss, led by founder Ivan Montik, CEO Pavel Kashuba, and former executive Maksim Trafimovich, is accused of enabling these sites to target Dutch players and evade regulators.
This investigation pulls back the curtain on a sophisticated scheme involving offshore shell companies, geo-evasion tactics, and a coordinated effort to bypass local gambling laws. As regulators scramble to catch up, SoftSwiss remains at the center of this high-stakes game, helping these unlicensed operators profit from European markets while flouting national regulations.
Key Facts:
- RevDuck’s Network: RevDuck uses a web of rotating Costa Rican entities to evade scrutiny and keep its illegal casinos running under the radar.
- SoftSwiss’s Role: SoftSwiss’s proprietary platform, Affilka, powers the entire RevDuck network, providing affiliate tracking, payment processing, and more—helping these casinos bypass legal restrictions.
- Enabling Dutch Market Targeting: Despite ongoing sanctions by the Dutch regulator KSA, SoftSwiss’s tools allow RevDuck to target Dutch players with tailored content and payment options.
- Leadership Involvement: Ivan Montik, Pavel Kashuba, and Maksim Trafimovich are all directly tied to SoftSwiss’s infrastructure, which plays a central role in facilitating these illegal operations.
A Corporate Shell Game: Rotating Entities to Evade the Law
At the core of RevDuck’s strategy is a deceptive corporate shell game, where casinos like Holyluck and Trueluck use various Costa Rican entities to obfuscate their ownership. For instance, when Dutch players visit Holyluck.com, they are automatically redirected to holyluck2.com—linked to a different shell company, Gem Limitada. This strategy keeps regulators and payment processors in the dark, ensuring that no one entity is consistently tied to these illicit operations.
This deliberate confusion mirrors the tactics employed by other offshore operators that have come under scrutiny in the Netherlands. Booms.bet, for example, was fined €840,000 by the Dutch gambling authority for targeting Dutch users using similar Costa Rican entities. Both RevDuck’s casinos and Booms.bet share the same registration number—3-102-903325—tied to Sapphire Summit SRL, underlining the orchestrated nature of the operation.
SoftSwiss: The Enabler of Illegal Gambling
SoftSwiss’s involvement goes beyond merely providing tech tools. The company is directly complicit in enabling RevDuck’s illegal network to thrive. Through its affiliate platform, Affilka, SoftSwiss supplies the infrastructure needed for RevDuck to track users, process payments, and remain undetected by regulators.
Founded by Ivan Montik, SoftSwiss has long been known for its involvement with cryptocurrency payment processing, notably through CoinsPaid, a company he co-founded. CoinsPaid plays a key role in enabling financial transactions for RevDuck’s casinos. Montik’s connection to both SoftSwiss and CoinsPaid raises serious concerns about the company’s role in facilitating financial operations for illegal gambling networks.
Pavel Kashuba, the CEO of SoftSwiss, oversees the operation of Affilka and its role in the RevDuck network. Under his leadership, SoftSwiss has become more deeply integrated with illegal gambling operations, providing essential tools that allow operators like RevDuck to stay under the radar of regulators. Kashuba’s leadership directly connects SoftSwiss to the growing illegal gambling market that targets European nations like the Netherlands.
Maksim Trafimovich, who served as an executive within SoftSwiss, was involved in shaping the company’s expansion into the affiliate and payment sectors. His work in setting up SoftSwiss’s infrastructure has made it easier for illegal operators to take advantage of the company’s tools. Trafimovich’s contributions helped build the foundation that allowed SoftSwiss to become an unwitting—or perhaps willing—partner in criminal gambling operations.
SoftSwiss’s Payment Infrastructure: Facilitating Money Laundering
A critical component of this illegal network is SoftSwiss’s ability to facilitate payment processing through a range of channels, including Visa, Mastercard, Bitcoin, and Revolut. By integrating with cryptocurrency processors like CoinsPaid, SoftSwiss enables RevDuck to process deposits and withdrawals with little oversight from financial regulators.
These payment systems are a key enabler for money laundering, allowing RevDuck to easily move funds across borders, bypassing traditional financial channels and making it harder for regulators to trace illicit profits. SoftSwiss’s extensive payment infrastructure is more than just a passive service—it is an active facilitator of illegal gambling transactions.
Dutch Market: The Primary Target
Despite the ban on unlicensed casinos in the Netherlands, RevDuck, powered by SoftSwiss, has focused its efforts on Dutch players. Trueluck and Holyluck feature full Dutch language localization and offer local payment methods, including Visa, Revolut, and Bitcoin.
RevDuck’s strategy to target Dutch users is clear: they are actively circumventing Dutch law by promoting their sites on Dutch-language portals, using geo-redirects to ensure that Dutch players are continuously able to access these unlicensed casinos. SoftSwiss, through its tools, helps RevDuck to reach these players even after the Dutch gambling regulator, KSA, has imposed sanctions on operators like Booms.bet.
RevDuck has openly acknowledged its strategy of circumventing KSA’s restrictions, even criticizing the Dutch regulator’s policies on gambling enforcement. This open defiance only further underscores the role that SoftSwiss is playing in facilitating these operations.
SoftSwiss Executives Must Be Held Accountable
The evidence is overwhelming: SoftSwiss, through its platform and payment systems, is directly responsible for enabling the RevDuck network to operate illegally in the Netherlands and beyond. Key figures within SoftSwiss—Ivan Montik, Pavel Kashuba, and Maksim Trafimovich—have played pivotal roles in the company’s involvement with this illegal activity.
The fact that SoftSwiss continues to provide tools to operators who openly flout local gambling laws raises serious questions about the company’s willingness to ignore regulatory requirements in favor of profits. With the clear evidence of SoftSwiss’s role in facilitating illegal gambling, it is time for regulators across Europe and beyond to investigate the company’s activities and hold its executives accountable for their role in enabling these crimes.
Conclusion: SoftSwiss is Not Just a Tech Provider, It’s an Active Enabler of Illegal Gambling
SoftSwiss’s role in the illegal gambling network revealed by RevDuck is no accident. The company, led by Ivan Montik, Pavel Kashuba, and Maksim Trafimovich, is deeply embedded in facilitating these illegal operations. By providing key tools like Affilka for affiliate tracking, payment processing, and financial oversight, SoftSwiss has become the backbone of RevDuck’s illegal casinos.
As regulatory agencies around the world continue to crack down on illegal gambling, SoftSwiss must be held responsible for its actions. The company is not just a neutral provider of technology—it is a crucial player in a network that undermines legal gambling markets, evades sanctions, and profits from the exploitation of Dutch players. It’s time for SoftSwiss to face the consequences of its role in enabling these illegal operations.