On a deciding Sunday in the state football championship, a group of residents of the capital place a few thousand reales on a betting site, get the result right and win a lot of money. It would be just another group of lucky people in the city, if the platform's fraud prevention system didn't detect an anomaly. Cross-referencing data such as names, locations and amounts invested, he identifies the origin of the games and finds that one of the bettors is a cousin of the referee who played in the match.
Cases like this are nothing new in the sector. To prevent different types of scams, payment platforms have the challenge of building tools that cross-reference information and manage suspicious cases, all taking into account the volume of data and the routine of bookmakers.
Robots and oranges
Today there are groups specializing in the use of robots that place small bets in large volumes, dispersing the results and making it difficult to identify illicit actions. Another tactic, according to him, is the use of oranges that provide “hot accounts”, that is, accounts that have not yet been tracked by the platforms.
The schemes work by coordinating the actions of different groups, such as recruiters, who combine the result with a player or referee; bettors, who use their accounts to place the bet and receive a previously agreed amount; the financiers, who invest the money that will be used to place the bets and the administrators, who carry out the financial transactions between those involved.
Pay attention to gaps
To capture this type of action, there are specific tracking technologies that must be incorporated into payment systems. As I have already worked on fraud prevention for large financial technology companies in Silicon Valley, I reinforce that it is necessary to invest on two fronts: developing data intelligence and investigating loopholes that could enable fraud to be carried out.
This type of violation harms the bookmaker in several ways. In addition to the immediate financial damage from bets made under illegal conditions, houses that do not have a robust anti-fraud system have their image damaged, with implications also for the sector's credibility.
João Gabriel Fraga
Paag CEO
