Some gamblers are influenced and they don't chose gambling naturally. Either influenced by parents as a child or influenced by friends or peer groups as a youth. Even if you are not directly influenced, the activities happening in your environment will greatly impact you.
It is only few that makes the decision of betting by themselves. Note that when you are lured into betting in the early time, whatever decisions you are making will feel original to you but they are still influenced.
For Op, what you explained above is fraud and it is greed that leads to such type of fraud.
Being influenced in doing gambling activities by someone close to you is very possible and might cause the start of being a gambler but also remember casino that offers a very good offer to start your gambling journey. There are also social media influencers that promotes gambling games. In fact there are streamers in my country that don't really promote casinos but today so many online game streamers in my country is promoting it because of a hefty pay by casinos. So many people including minors are drawn into gambling which alarmed our government but sadly, even if the casino is now closed because of not abiding the law, the influencers promoted it didn't even experience jail time.
Someone who promotes a service or a platform that is still legal within the country he lives in isn't lawfully punishable even if it's done for money or for free. So I don't think that influencers or anyone who promoted gambling or gambling platforms until it was legal and they were openly operating are in any way on the verge of getting jail time or any other punishment.
You are right that a lot of people start gambling only after getting influenced by someone else that is either someone close to them or someone they admire or watch and follow on the internet like all the so-called social media influencers.