The truth is like: how a one-year-old child advertised an illegal casino

A married couple from Mari El did not tattoo their one-year-old son with the name of an illegal casino, but applied the inscription with a gel pen. Victoria, the baby's mother, told Izvestia about this. The video was staged to participate in the contest by blogger Melstroi, who advertised his online casino in this way. But it was too late to justify himself: the video immediately attracted the attention of the media, public figures and deputies. Ekaterina Mizulina promised to submit the materials to the Investigative Committee for verification. This is not the first time that Melstroy, with his promises of large prizes, provokes the emergence of a wave of viral videos with shocking antics on social networks. Meanwhile, State Duma deputies submitted to the government a bill on the introduction of criminal liability for the involvement of minors in gambling.

"We didn't think they would believe it"

A few days ago, 23-year-old Victoria from Mari El posted a video on her TikTok account with 23.5 thousand subscribers. In it, a crying one-year-old baby is tattooed with the name of an illegal casino on his arm. The clip was recorded to participate in a raffle of several million rubles, organized by streamer Melstroy (Andrey Burim). According to one of the rules of the contest, it was necessary to make viral content, where the name of the gambling resource would flash in the frame, and the video would get into the trends on TikTok.

The video of a married couple from Mari El caused public outrage, and Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of the Safe Internet League, did not stand aside. She criticized both the boy's mother and everyone else who went along with the blogger and began recording shocking videos, including damaging passports and diplomas, shaving their hair, setting fire to a house, changing their last name to a streamer's nickname, and more. Mizulina promised to submit the materials to the Investigative Committee for verification.

In a conversation with Izvestia, the author of the video stated that it was staged. To confirm that everything is fine with the baby, Victoria sent a Telegram to the krug correspondent, which shows that there are no tattoos.

— We pretended to get a tattoo, I didn't think people would believe it, because this is a one-year-old child, he's not 18, not 20 years old. I understand that adults will endure this pain, a child would not be able to endure it, especially since his skin is soft. The inscription was written with a gel black pen. And he was crying because he was tired all day and wanted to sleep," the child's mother told Izvestia.

The girl also said that she does not play online casinos herself and treats them negatively, because she has a friend who got into big debts because of gambling. She saw the announcement of the contest from Melstroy on social networks, the streamer promised from 1 to 5 million rubles to the authors of those videos that he liked. Victoria didn't come up with the idea for the video either, but she looked it up online. However, according to her, in the end, even though Burim saw her video, he said that he would not accept a video with children in the frame to participate in the competition.

Victoria apologized for her actions.

— We apologize for such an act, we did not think that people would believe it, and it all looked improbable, — said the girl.

Small business and scandals

This is not the first time Melstroy has provoked scandals. He himself hails from Gomel, and began his career as a streamer in his teens with online broadcasts of games like Counter-Strike and Dota. It didn't get many views, so he switched to a conversational chatroulette format, for example, by persuading underage girls to undress in front of the camera. At about the same time, as he himself said, he became addicted to gambling through case casino sites, which Izvestia had previously written about.

After becoming a trash streamer, the blogger moved to Moscow and threw big parties in a spacious rented apartment, broadcast on streams. He used them to play online casinos, and for the entertainment of the public, he simultaneously organized humiliating contests among visitors to the apartment. Due to a series of scandals, the initiation of a criminal case against him and the wanted list, Burim had to leave Russia.

The situation that a married couple from Mari El found themselves in is related to the blogger's launch of his own gambling platform. To promote it, he resorted to his already favorite format — stimulating the audience to create viral videos in exchange for the promise of large prizes. The current promotion is still relatively "poor" by the standards of the streamer. Previously, he promised prizes of up to $1 million, for example, if a user records a video in which the president of a country or a famous football player sends greetings to a blogger, or for the fact that his name appears in space.

To his surprise, people quickly fulfilled the conditions of seemingly difficult tasks. As a result, he spent his entire advertising budget, began to cheat his team and contestants with payments, got into big debts and quarreled with some sponsors.

Correspondence betting: how much do stars earn from advertising illegal casinos

Shadow business pays billions to famous streamers, singers and bloggers to involve young people in gambling

Melstroy is far from the only streamer advertising gambling. Earlier, Izvestia wrote about how Internet celebrities earn tens of millions of rubles for promoting illegal online casinos and bookmakers. Among them are rapper Morgenstern (listed as a foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice), who was involved in this some time ago, and singer Egor Creed.

The total income of streamers and bloggers from online casino advertising can reach 30 billion rubles per year, Izvestia estimates. Everyone's earnings scheme is quite simple: you just need to post a referral link on your channel or during the broadcast; if one of the viewers or subscribers follows it to the casino's website and starts losing money, then part of this amount goes to the person who posted the link. Thus, Internet figures with an audience of thousands have a constant influx of funds from thousands of ludomaniacs.

The streaming platforms themselves tried to fight illegal casinos by distributing bans and deleting entire channels for streaming slots. However, this did not help either — the streamers moved to the Kick platform, which was created by the Stake online casino, where such broadcasts are not prohibited.

From ridiculous fines to criminal charges

In August 2025, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Youth Policy, Artyom Metelev, announced the imminent introduction of a bill to impose fines for online casino advertising in the amount of up to 500 thousand rubles for individuals and up to 7 million rubles for legal entities.

This was followed by the head of the State Duma Committee on the Development of Civil Society, issues of public and religious associations, Yana Lantratova. An inter-factional group of deputies under her leadership developed and submitted to the government for review on October 22 a bill on criminalizing the involvement of minors in gambling.

"The new article 171.2.1 criminalizes illegal gambling advertising. If the advertisement is aimed at children or is distributed via the Internet, the perpetrators face up to five years in prison. They will be especially severely punished for working in a group, using social networks or extracting large income," the explanatory note to the document says.

Stop cards: self-ban on gambling will be introduced for at least a year

The list of citizens who have submitted an application is promised to be updated every 12 hours.

The bill also introduces a new crime (they proposed to supplement Article 151 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) — involving minors in gambling.

— Such stories confirm the importance of our bill on criminal liability for casino advertising and the involvement of minors in gambling. Our initiative provides for appropriate sanctions: fines of up to 300,000 rubles or imprisonment for up to two years for illegal gambling advertising, and up to five years in prison if this is aimed at minors or involves them in gambling," Yana Lantratova said in a comment to Izvestia.

With regard to the situation in Mari El, she drew attention to mitigating circumstances — the commission of an act for the first time, the presence of a minor child, and called it advisable to impose a fine rather than a real term of imprisonment.

— This case is a direct consequence of the propaganda carried out by bloggers such as Melstroy and others like him, motivating their viewers to be destructive. The adoption of our bill will help protect children from those who try to trade their future and health for the sake of advertising and money," the deputy concluded.