How to stop bonus abuse in online casinos

The common tactics

• Duplicate accounts. The same person signs up with new emails, phones and payment details.
• Friends and family accounts. Real people lend their details, while one person plays them all.
• Low risk betting. Covering both sides of a bet across accounts to clear wagering requirements.
• Organised groups. Many accounts run together, often with bought identities.

Why most defences only slow it down

Stricter wagering rules punish honest players as much as abusers. Email, IP and device checks help, but each one is cheap to change. Manual reviews catch patterns weeks after the money has left. All of them raise the cost of abuse a little; none of them removes the payoff.

Remove the payoff at sign-up

Bonus abuse only pays if one person can hold many accounts. A live face check at registration ends that. Each account is bound to one real face, and a face that is already registered with you is flagged before the bonus is granted. Liveness stops the obvious workaround of holding up someone else's photo.

A second check before withdrawal catches the friends and family pattern too. The person cashing out has to be the person who registered, live on camera, not whoever is running the accounts.

Keep it light for real players

The check takes about ten seconds in the phone or laptop browser, with no app and no documents, so honest players barely notice it. You can also choose when to ask: every sign-up, only bonus claims, or only when your risk rules raise a flag.

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