Report: Bonus Hunting Tops List of iGaming Fraud in Q1 2024

Sumsub, a global full-cycle verification platform, has released its iGaming Fraud Report for Q1 2024.

The report identifies the most prevalent fraud schemes in the online gambling industry, including bonus abuse, affiliate fraud, illegitimate chargebacks, money laundering, and account takeovers.

While the report does not provide the percentage of each fraud type for Q1 2024, it does include data from the previous year.

In 2023, the most common types of fraud were as follows:

• Bonus abuse (bonus hunting) – 69.9%
• Money laundering – 9.9%
• Payment system fraud – 5.9%
• Chargeback fraud – 5.6%
• Opposite betting (arbitrage betting) – 2.3%
• Other types of fraud – 6.4%

The report also highlights the countries with the highest number of gambling fraudsters in Q1 2024. These include Bangladesh (8.5% of all players), Indonesia (8.0% of all players), South Korea (6.6% of all players), Pakistan (6.1% of all players), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (6.0% of all players).

Notably, among these countries, only Bosnia and Herzegovina legally permits gambling.

The Sumsub report also notes an increase in fraud attempts during the iGaming verification process, rising from 0.4% in 2022 to 1.1% in Q1 2024. The types of documents most commonly used by fraudsters for fake verifications include:

• ID Card – 1.7%
• Driver’s license – 0.7%
• Passport – 1.6%
• Residence permit – 1.4%

Overall, Sumsub reports that the number of fraud cases in the iGaming sector increased by an average of 64% year-on-year from 2022 to 2024.

In our previous report, TransUnion indicated that more than 10% of online transactions in the US gambling industry in 2023 could have been fraudulent.