Bonus abuse is not a solo problem: EveryMatrix says organised syndicates are driving the real risk

EveryMatrix’s Tetiana Dychenko and Stian Enger Pettersen argue that operators treating bonus abuse as a small, isolated issue are underestimating it. For PSPs, acquirers, and gaming operators, the important bit is not the label — it’s that the abuse now spans onboarding, promotions, cash-out behavior, and networked fraud at scale.

1. EveryMatrix says bonus abuse has four distinct profiles: the solo “bonus hunter,” the “sports trader,” the “insider,” and the “syndicate.” That matters because each one attacks a different weak point in the stack, from wagering loopholes and multi-accounting to traffic laundering, fake conversions, referral farming, and industrial-scale evasion.
2. The solo “bonus hunter” uses throwaway accounts, quick cashouts, wagering loopholes, multi-accounting, and bonus parking. The “sports trader” looks for pricing or rule mismatches between bookmakers, then uses automated betting scripts and cross-book hedging to lock in risk-free profits. The “insider” sits closer to the marketing side, using traffic laundering, fake conversions, and referral farming.
3. The fourth profile, the “syndicate,” is the one operators should worry about most. EveryMatrix describes it as organised and coordinated, with the ability to circumvent controls on an industrial scale, including cash-out networks, identity spoofing, IP farming, and bot armies. In practice, that means the problem is not just abuse of one promotion; it is coordinated pressure on the whole acquisition and payout chain.
4. Dychenko said these groups are “coordinated groups with dedicated teams constantly monitoring promotions, probing for vulnerabilities, and rapidly exploiting any weakness they uncover.” She added that once a loophole appears — in bonus terms, game mechanics, or onboarding processes — it spreads quickly across the network, and “what begins as a minor issue can escalate into significant financial losses in a very short time.”
5. The article cites research showing iGaming fraud rates doubled between 2023 and 2025, while 83% of industry professionals reported an increase in activity over the previous year. It also notes Europol’s view that fraud schemes are now the fastest-growing area of organised crime, which helps explain why betting and gaming transactions keep drawing attention.

The practical takeaway for high-risk operators and their payment partners is simple: manual review alone is not going to keep up if the abuse is organised, automated, and networked. If a bonus strategy can be gamed at scale, it stops being a marketing issue and becomes a payments, fraud, and risk-engineering problem.