Free spins or fraud losses? How iGaming can beat bonus abuse cheats

Sign-up promos, free spins, introductory offers – all great ways to boost sales, increase brand awareness and attract new customers. But what they also attract is fraud; fraud that can lead to huge revenue losses.

Bonus abuse fraud involves signing up to a service multiple times using marketing offers aimed at new customers, cheating the system of bonus payments and freebies. And bonus abuse is booming, reportedly costing the online gaming sector around 15% of its annual gross revenue.

“Bonus abuse is booming, reportedly costing the online gaming sector around 15% of its annual gross revenue.”

Multiple identities and affiliate programs

Simple bonus abuse can occur when a fraudster signs up multiple times using many different identities to receive the same new customer bonus.

By registering with multiple identities, creating multiple accounts and claiming rewards, fraudsters can simply abandon accounts and repeat the process for as long as they remain undetected. Weak online identity verification checks are often to blame.

Affiliate programmes also attract bonus cheats. On signing up to a casino or iGaming affiliate programme the fraudster refers leads who are only interested in sign up incentives, pocketing cost per lead commissions, or generating fake traffic to earn cost per click commissions.

“23% of businesses see synthetic identity fraud as the most prevalent fraud scheme in their industry”

(State of Digital Identity Report 2022)

Synthetic identity fraud and ‘gnoming’

In our State of Digital Identity Report 2022, we revealed 23% of businesses see synthetic identity fraud as the most prevalent fraud scheme in their industry. Fraudsters plant synthetic ID data – names, emails, stolen credit card details – into traditional data sources, so that companies can be tricked into thinking these IDs are real and approve registration.

If a digital service is vulnerable to synthetic identity fraud, an individual or group will create multiple fake accounts – a process known as ‘gnoming’. Once in the system, fraudsters are free to begin their attacks.

So, how to beat the bonus cheats?

All this identity fraud trickery can mean your new customer bonus is missing its mark and costing your business dear. It also adds another layer of complexity in filtering valued new customers from bad or fake ones.

To beat the bonus abuse cheats, first you have to spot them and there are various signals to watch out for and be wise to:

• Suspicious IP
  Visitors using a VPN, TOR browser, or blacklisted residential proxies.
• Suspicious device
  Repeat visitors using a similar combination of hardware and software.
• Suspicious speed
  Fraudsters may sign up significantly faster if they’ve done it before.
• Suspicious exits
  Quick cash outs are a flag of possible fraudsters. Fake accounts often dump chips or withdraw winnings much faster after registration.
• Suspicious patterns of play
  Some games are likely to attract more fraudsters than others, especially low odds games that minimize risk.

“Mobile Intelligence allows casino or iGaming operators to flag possible fraud in real time using secure mobile”

Mobile Intelligence for iGaming

Some of these bonus abuse signals can be hard or costly to spot requiring a lot of time to set up, run and analyse checks.

Mobile Intelligence allows casino or iGaming operators to flag possible fraud in real time using secure mobile operator data, by integrating simple API-based data signals into player onboarding and in-life gaming journeys.

• Number allocation check
  Check registered mobile numbers are valid and active, not spoofed from a VOIP service, cancelled, lost, stolen or in any way compromised.
• Mobile-to-person match
  Match registered mobile numbers with a real customer name and address preventing the same number from being used multiple times.
• SIM swap and call forwarding signals
  Check registered mobile numbers have not been taken over. Signs that the SIM card associated has been swapped or call forwarding set ( allowing SMS or voice OTPs to be intercepted) are both flags.
• Mobile authentication
  Enable secure two-factor authentication ensuring that the registered mobile device is in the hands of your customer when a new account is created, or bonuses cashed in.

Make sure your free spins don’t cost your iGaming business a fortune, speak to our trust experts about identity verification and end bonus abuse fraud.