France’s ANJ tightens operator guidance on player fraud

France’s gambling regulator has published a practical guide for licensed online gambling operators on how to identify, document, and respond to player fraud. The key point for PSPs and operators: ANJ did not create new legal duties, but it did make the expected evidentiary bar much more explicit.

1. ANJ, France’s gambling regulator, issued the guide after consulting with operators and the gaming ombudsman. It is aimed at licensed online gambling operators and is meant to clarify how to apply existing anti-fraud and anti-money laundering rules in practice, rather than add new obligations on top.
2. The guide addresses a familiar set of operational questions: when an operator can close an account, withhold or return player balances, cancel bets, or redistribute tournament prizes that are deemed fraudulently obtained. For payments teams, that matters because these are the decisions that often trigger disputes, chargebacks, and follow-up questions from banks and acquiring partners.
3. ANJ says operators need proof, not just suspicion. The guide points to the types of evidence and converging indicators (faisceaux d’indices) that French courts have accepted in prior litigation, including IP addresses, device logs, and connection timings. In other words: if an operator wants to take corrective action that could end up in court, it needs a paper trail that looks like a paper trail.
4. The regulator identified six common fraud categories in online gambling: identity fraud, payment fraud and abusive chargebacks, in-game cheating, money-dumping, and sporting event manipulation. For each category, the guide explains the relevant legal provisions and recommends operational responses.
5. Operators are being pushed to review their KYC, fraud detection protocols, contractual terms, and technical safeguards so they align with the guide and with certification standards. ANJ is also keeping pressure on the safer gambling side of the house: in July, it fined an unnamed online betting operator, Company X, €500,000 ($572,797) for failing to properly identify and support customers showing signs of problematic gambling.

That Company X case is a useful reminder of where ANJ’s attention is landing: not just fraud controls, but whether operators can show they classified risk correctly. According to the regulator, the operator failed to correctly identify 29 high-risk players at the appropriate risk level, with six missed entirely and 23 placed in a lower tier.