It is no secret that most online casinos and gambling platforms are subject to fraud. Some gamers may take advantage of the rules of the casino to enrich themselves. For most online gambling operators, the risk of been defrauded takes many shapes compared to the risk of gambling posses for players. In such a situation where a player tries to defraud an online casino, he/she can face legal action for breaching the rules. Most of these scammers have devised a good number of ways to exploit the loopholes in online casinos. As the online casino market continues rising (and is expected to reach a whopping 1$ Trillion this year), gambling operators have become increasingly high targets for scammers. This content will analyze the type of challenges they face, and how they can protect their business.

Can an Online Casino Sue Me?

The answer is yes. An online casino operator can sue its users. There are many grounds for this to happen. The online casino can sue you for fraudulent activity. That is the operator can sue all users trying to rip off its (gambling operators) platform through various scams.

Common Types of Online Gambling Fraud

While fraudulent individuals tirelessly devise new ways to exploit online casinos, below are some of the common ways they can attack the system:

Multiple account fraud

Multiple account fraud is reportedly the cornerstone on which most gambling attacks are built on. Malicious users can do this by creating dozens or even hundreds of user accounts with fake credentials. The goal is to overrun the balance in their favor. They may sue such accounts for bonus abuse, gnoming, and chip dumping.

Bonus abuse

Bonus abuse happens when the numerous fake accounts receive from new signing up bonuses from the casino. Some online casinos even offer coupons and many other attractive promotions. While these promos are an excellent way to attract new players, they can quickly make your platform run at a loss if you hand out too many of them.

Gnoming

Gnoming involves using one user account among the many accounts to make sure you (the fraudster) win(s). The rest of the many accounts are made to deliberately lose. This way one can account pocket the winnings and bonuses.

Chip dumping

Chip dumping is mostly practiced on the poker table. Just like gnoming, the goal behind chip dumping is to create multiple accounts and make sure that they join the same table to cheat the system by influencing the results to go in their favor or against them.

Collusion

Here multiple players manipulate the system to get a certain outcome. In another case, a single individual can use multiple accounts to meet the same targets. Online poker is one avenue for this type of scam. Players will collude to commit bonus fraud. They can also open a new user account and start again. Collusion can also occur for a user to win a larger pot. Players can sign up for two accounts and use one of these accounts to lose to the other account.

Other Types of Attacks

Other common types of attacks on online gambling operators are payment attacks. Most online casinos and online gambling platforms essentially deal with digital wallets. Hence, processing payment always leaves room for potential losses as malicious individuals can attack easily via this format. Here are a few ways that they can do this:

Stolen credit cards

Some fraudsters can use the details of a stolen card to top up their user account. This means they are using illegal money to cash in real wins.

Chargebacks

Chargebacks usually happen after the fraudster has topped their user account. Once this is done, they’ll request a chargeback from their credit card provider or bank. This means they’ll get refunded at the expense of the online gambling operator.

Phone top-up abuse

Phone top-up abuse is a sophisticated way for malicious users to top up their clients. If an online casino offers users phone top-up, scammers call burner phone holders. They try to trick them into topping their balance. This top-up is mostly done to fund their online gambling accounts.

How to Identify and Prevent Malicious Online Casino Users

There are some simple ways to identify and stop malicious users from signing up to online casinos. The most important way that online businesses use to do this is a good KYC (Know Your Customer) practice. A good KYC protocol will involve implementing several steps for all users to sign up with. These steps mostly include providing your basic information during the user registration process like:

• Identity verification (this will depend on the local legislation)
• Verification of age (this is an important requirement that can’t be skipped)
• Politically Exposed Person (PEP) check (this relates to prominent public personalities like heads of state, ambassadors, and high-ranking officials, etc).

During the signing up process, the gambling operator can continue monitoring the data with methods like:

• Device fingerprinting: get information about the user’s device because some of these devices will indicate suspicious usage almost instantly.
• Email analysis: most user emails are usually linked to their social media accounts. This makes it much easier to track malicious accounts.
• IP analysis: just device fingerprinting, a user’s IP address can say a lot about their internet usage, and location, as well as their potential for malicious activity.

Some of the above steps can be used during the login process to make sure the user is the real owner of the account. IP analysis and device fingerprinting can help flag those who try to hack or take over the account of others (whether their credentials were stolen or acquired via phishing). Additionally, during top-ups, it is paramount that the operator monitors the credit card data of users to ensure it isn’t stolen or isn’t a threat to the platform.

Final Words

Online gambling operators or casinos face a difficult task. However, it becomes easier when they follow the simple ways discussed above to monitor and prevent user fraud. These platforms operate as digital wallets which exposes them to numerous risk factors. To tackle this they will need sophisticated tools to identify and flag data. But, just like many other industries, implementing a basic solution can go a long way. It could prevent chargebacks, and increase their income.

Most importantly, this business depends on user trust. This is why building relationships with players is essential. Hence, they’ll want to avoid reasons to sue players. They’ll see preventing fraud as essential.