PointsBet USA, the American sportsbook division of the PointsBet company, has announced via Twitter that the official company domain had been used to send customers a cryptocurrency phishing scam email.

The sports and gaming entertainment company explained that this was done by a third-party provider.

Only a few weeks ago, PointsBet announced it would be selling its US division and withdrawing from the North American markets.

A tweet from the PointsBet account said: “An email was sent this morning by a third-party provider that was not an official PointsBet communication in relation to cryptocurrency.

“Please delete this message and do not click or respond in any way.

“We will pause all emails from our system until the matter has been fully resolved with our third-party partner.”

The email reportedly promised to double the amount of currency customers had in their crypto accounts.

The thread continued: “Thank you for your patience as we quickly resolved an issue related to a phishing attempt this morning.

“PointsBet would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused to customers.

“We can confirm this was a phishing attempt made to our mailing list and the third-party did not have visibility of individual email addresses."

Although it took PointsBet almost two hours to alert customers via Twitter of the scam, the statement did assure them that no data breach had taken place.

The company also stressed: “There was no breach of core player account management or internal systems. We again apologise for any inconvenience.”