Beyond .bet.br: 7 security checks to avoid fake betting scams in Brazil

On Brazil’s National Online Betting Day, Carol Luna, Head of Compliance at Grupo Esportes Gaming Brasil, set out the basic checks consumers should make before depositing money: authorization, official channels, payment flows, and responsible gaming tools. For regulated operators and their PSPs, the point is obvious: the domain is only the first filter, not the whole KYC story.

1. Check the official SPA list. The Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas (SPA) keeps a public list of companies authorized to operate nationally in Brazil, including the legal entity, CNPJ, commercial brands, domains, and the authorization ordinance. That lets users verify whether the brand and the actual website match an authorized operator.
2. Do not rely on ads or search results alone. Sponsored ads, messages in apps, social media profiles, and search engine results do not replace checking the actual URL. Fake pages can copy logos, colors, and campaigns from legitimate brands, which is exactly why the SPA list matters more than whatever showed up first on Google.
3. Use only the confirmed domain or the company’s official channels. The article notes that links should come from the domain listed by the SPA or from the operator’s own official channels. Shortened links, unusual brand-name variations, spelling errors, and requests to complete registration outside the platform are all warning signs.
4. Check whether the platform verifies identity. Regulated companies are expected to verify the user’s identity, and this is part of distinguishing a supervised operation from a clandestine site or a fake page. For PSPs, this is also where onboarding, fraud checks, and payment controls start to matter in practice.
5. Look at where payments come from and where they go. Carol Luna’s warning is not just about the front end. Consumers should pay attention to the payment sources and the overall payment experience, because that is often where fraudulent flows expose themselves before a complaint ever reaches support.
6. Check for responsible gaming tools. The article includes the existence of player protection tools as one of the key signals that the operator is regulated. For high-risk operators, these tools are not decorative; they are part of the operating perimeter that regulators and payment partners will expect to see.
7. Make sure customer support is reachable. Luna’s checklist also includes how to access support. If a platform makes it hard to identify the operator, verify the user, understand the payments, or reach support, that is not a small UX issue — it is part of the fraud and compliance picture.

The timing matters. 20 August is associated in the sector with National Online Betting Day, marking 20 August 2024, when the priority deadline for authorization requests to the Ministry of Finance expired. Since 1 January 2025, only companies authorized by the SPA can operate nationally in Brazil, and authorized sites use the .bet.br extension.