Promotional campaigns such as welcome offers, free spins, cashback and referral rewards are designed to attract genuine players and accelerate growth for iGaming brands. Yet they have also created one of the industry’s most expensive fraud exposures: bonus abuse.
According to Identomat, the most prevalent form is multi-accounting, where a single player, fraud ring or organised betting syndicate opens multiple accounts to repeatedly claim the same promotion.
Some rely on fabricated details, while others deploy stolen identities, borrowed documents, synthetic profiles or mule accounts. The tactics differ, but the objective is identical: make one person appear to be many players. For operators, the damage extends beyond compliance. Duplicate accounts drain promotional budgets, distort acquisition metrics, trigger costly manual reviews and obscure genuine high-value customers.
The problem intensifies during high-volume windows. Major sporting tournaments, seasonal casino campaigns and new-market launches all generate registration spikes, and fraudsters deliberately strike when fraud teams are stretched thin.
Traditional signals such as email verification, phone checks, IP monitoring, device intelligence and payment analysis remain valuable, but they cannot answer the fundamental question of whether a player is a unique, legitimate individual. Emails can be generated in seconds, phone numbers rented, IPs masked and devices rotated. Even document checks fall short if they only confirm an ID looks valid without proving the person presenting it is the rightful owner.
Biometric player verification closes this gap by shifting from account-based to person-based verification. A typical flow combines ID verification, liveness detection to confirm a real person is physically present, face match against the document portrait, duplicate account screening and risk-based decisioning. This changes the economics of fraud: a bonus hunter can rotate devices and emails, but cannot easily become a different live person.
The urgency is underlined by Liminal’s 2025 KYC research, which found that 79% of surveyed organisations felt unprepared to deal with synthetic identities, while 87% felt unequipped to handle deepfakes.
Beyond compliance, the commercial case is compelling. Operators benefit from lower bonus leakage, cleaner acquisition data, faster automated decisions, reduced friction for genuine players and a stronger regulatory posture across identity, age verification, AML and responsible gambling obligations. Sportsbook KYC teams face particular pressure around major events, when registration surges and aggressive promotions create ideal conditions for abuse.
Identity verification firm Identomat offers ID verification, liveness checks, face match, age verification, AML monitoring and configurable onboarding workflows to help operators detect duplicates, add step-up checks before bonus claims or withdrawals, and keep onboarding fast for legitimate users. The principle is simple: bonus hunters lose when every account maps to one verified human.
Read the full Identomat post here.
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