Asia Pacific Online Gambling Fraud Jumps 4.5 Times
According to the latest report by identity verification company Sumsub, suspicious activities within the global online gambling industry increased by four and a half times from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026, despite falling fraud rates in the Asia Pacific region. The report notes that the increase is happening amid increased sophistication in threats in the region.
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Fraud Shifts After KYC
Sumsub’s iGaming Fraud Report 2026 reviewed more than 3 million fraud attempts across online gambling verification processes. The report found that fraudsters are moving away from attacks on account registration and instead targeting verified accounts with artificial intelligence and other advanced methods.
The average value of suspicious transactions also increased, rising to $6,500 from $3,960 a year earlier. That suggests not only a higher volume of activity but also larger-value attempts being flagged by operators.
Even though the complexity of attacks was increasing, there were regional improvements in the APAC region with respect to the rates of fraud. This rate dropped by 45% from 3.49% in 2024 to 1.92% in Q1 of 2026. According to Sumsub, strict regulatory requirements in the markets of the Philippines, Australia, Macao, and New Zealand contributed to such positive results even though the regional rates of fraud were higher than the global rate of 1.53%.
Post-Verification Risks
The report said 76% of all fraud cases in the Asia Pacific now occur after the initial Know Your Customer stage. That shift means the main pressure is no longer just on onboarding checks, but on the period after a player has already passed verification.
Penny Chai, Sumsub’s vice president for Asia Pacific, said the region is seeing a significant sophistication shift, with most fraud now occurring after KYC in the form of money mulling and bonus abuse among others. She added that fraudsters in the region are increasingly building identities designed to get through early filters.
Chai also said professional syndicates in the region are among the most capable globally at creating synthetic videos that can pass a one-camera check, with the aim of carrying out more damaging long-term fraud once inside a platform. Her comments underline the growing challenge for operators that rely on one-time checks alone.
Asia Pacific Hotspots
The report identified Cambodia, American Samoa, Singapore, South Korea, Bangladesh, and Japan as the Asia Pacific markets with the highest fraud rates. In addition to this, it stated that selfie-based fraud and deepfakes accounted for more than 2/3, i.e., 66.15%, of fraud cases in the region.
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The fraudsters have started using a lot of AI-based document forgery, face swapping, account farms, proxy networks, live bypass technologies, and automated bots to dodge detection. This report pointed out that such tactics have started being used more frequently due to increasing verification standards.
The findings come as the Philippine gaming sector is also tightening compliance requirements. Under new rules from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, business-to-business online gambling infrastructure providers will have to meet stricter anti-fraud standards.
Global Pressure Builds
The report said the problem is becoming more advanced worldwide as well. Fraudsters now spend 4.6 times longer completing identity verification than legitimate users, make 20% to 30% more verification attempts, and increasingly rely on repeated testing to get past security systems.
Kris Galloway, Sumsub’s iGaming product evangelist, said AI has sharply reduced the cost of fraud at scale. He referred to the latest trend as a massive amount of fake content generated or assisted by AI, including synthetic faces, altered documents, templated identities, and mass applications.
In addition, he pointed out that all low-quality approaches put tremendous stress on verification systems, manual teams, and fraud departments once they come in large volumes. As per him, AI has made it easier and cheaper to commit mass fraud, which has already been utilized by professionals.
Industry Response
Sumsub concluded that online gambling providers should go beyond single identity verification and employ continuous identity monitoring during the entire customer life cycle. In addition, it suggested that operators should incorporate device, IP address, email, phone number, and fraud intelligence into risk scoring.
The report further called for stronger onboarding through layered identity verification and digital identity systems. The main message of this report was that fraud should be considered as an ongoing issue by operators.
Source: Newsbytes.ph
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