Fake Gambling License Claims

What a fake gambling license claim is

A fake gambling license claim is exactly what it sounds like: a gambling site telling you it holds a license it does not hold. The claim usually takes one of a few familiar forms.

The first is the cloned seal. A site copies the logo or badge of a real regulator, often the Malta Gaming Authority or the Curaçao Gaming Authority, pastes it into its footer, and lets you assume the regulator vouched for it. The seal is usually just an image. It does not link anywhere, or it links to the regulator's homepage rather than to an entry for that specific site. A genuine seal normally leads to a verification page naming the licensed company and the licensed domain.

The second is the borrowed license number. A site prints a real license number belonging to a different operator. The number itself may check out on the regulator's register, but the register shows a different company or a different domain than the one you are playing on. This is why matching the domain matters as much as matching the number.

The third is the wrong format. License numbers follow patterns. MGA licenses, for instance, look like MGA/B2C/XXX/YYYY, and an incorrect format is a sign of a fake number¹. If a site claims an MGA license but the number does not fit that pattern, the claim is false on its face.

The fourth is the invented authority. Sites targeting players in Asia have claimed licenses from regulators that simply do not exist, such as the "Kuala Lumpur Gaming Commission"¹. Malaysia has no such body. Other warning signs that often travel with a fake license claim include no license number displayed at all, payments requested to personal bank accounts, crypto-only deposits, missing responsible gaming tools, and missing or one-sided terms and conditions¹.

Regulators do push back when they find these claims. On September 25, 2026, the Malta Gaming Authority published a notice declaring it has no connection with twelve URLs identified during that month, and warned that the MGA licenses those sites claim to hold are false⁴. PAGCOR in the Philippines has likewise urged the public to check its list of licensees on the PAGCOR website before accessing offshore gaming sites, precisely because sites present themselves as licensed when they are not⁵.

The UK Gambling Commission's guidance for players puts the practical habit in one line: before transferring money into a gambling account, check that the gambling business holds a license, and check that the details of the license, including activities and website domain names, match the public register³. That single habit, matching the domain to the register, defeats most fake claims.

Regulators and their registers: Curaçao, Malta, Anjouan and Kahnawà:ke

The regulators most often named in fake license claims are the same ones whose names carry weight with players in Asia. Knowing what their real licenses look like makes a copied one easier to spot.

Curaçao. Current Curaçao license numbers follow the OGL pattern. The claims made by sites accepting Asian players take several different forms:

A site claiming a Curaçao license today should have an OGL-format number; a bare claim of being "licensed in Curaçao" with no number at all is a weaker sign, and a number in no recognizable format is a red flag. You can read more about this system in our page on what replaced the Curaçao master license.

Malta. MGA licenses follow the MGA/B2C/XXX/YYYY pattern. Betfair International Plc, for example, is licensed and regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority under No. MGA/CRP/131/2006, for customers residing anywhere other than the UK, Australia or New Zealand¹¹. The Government of Gibraltar's gambling regulator also publishes a register of approved brands: Gibraltar's register of approved brands lists 777, 888, 888 Casino, 888 Poker and 888 Sport under 888 Holdings plc¹². Because the MGA name is the most frequently cloned, we cover these cases in detail in websites that falsely claim an MGA license.

Anjouan. Anjouan issues internet gaming licenses with numbers such as ALSI-202412004-FI1, and its verification pages show the licensed company, the domain and an operating status. A validation page generated on September 26, 2026 shows status VALID for Precise Interactive Inc, the operator behind CoinPoker, under License No. ALSI-202412004-FI1¹³. Each Anjouan license also lists excluded territories where the license does not permit play; that particular license excludes Australia, Comoros, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the USA, all FATF-blacklisted countries and sanctioned jurisdictions, and any territory the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority deems excluded¹³. So an Anjouan license is a real license, but it is territorial: a site holding one may still not be licensed to serve your country. Our page on Anjouan gaming licenses goes into what they cover.

Kahnawà:ke. The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission is a long-standing North American regulator, but the license claims you are most likely to see on sites accepting Asian players point elsewhere. Sites such as Dafabet state they are licensed and regulated in compliance with the laws of Curaçao for their remote betting business, while GCWIN99 and LuckyTaj say they operate under the master license of Gaming Services Provider N.V.¹⁴. Others, such as Casino Khajana, instead name the Curaçao Gaming Control Board as their regulator, a reminder that "Curaçao licensed" can mean different issuing bodies¹⁵.

The Curaçao portal breach and the Casino Secrets leak

In September 2026, Curaçao's licensing system itself became the story, and it is worth understanding why, because it affects how much weight a Curaçao license claim carries.

What Curaçao licensing looks like from the outside is a patchwork of claims. Casino Days displays Curaçao's e-gaming license No. OGL/2023/159/0076 on its site, while Shuffle.com states it holds a license from the Curaçao Gaming Control Board to offer games of chance¹⁶. Casino Khajana likewise says it is regulated and authorized by the Curaçao Gaming Control Board to provide interactive games of chance via its website¹⁶. These are the kinds of statements a license check starts from: a named regulator and, at best, a number you can look up.

Not every claim includes a number you can verify. Some sites, like Casino Days, publish a full license number in the OGL format¹⁷. Others, like Shuffle.com, name only the regulator, the Curaçao Gaming Control Board, without one¹⁷. And some describe the licensed activity rather than the license itself, as Casino Khajana does when it says it is authorized to provide interactive games of chance via the website¹⁷. The more of these details a site publishes, the easier your check becomes.

The differences matter because a claim of Curaçao licensing can refer to different things. A site may hold a license from the Curaçao Gaming Control Board, as Shuffle.com and Casino Khajana claim, or display an e-gaming license number in the OGL format, as Casino Days does¹⁷. In other words, "Curaçao licensed" on a homepage is not one uniform standard, and the exact wording tells you which regulator's register to search and what to look for once you get there.

The Curaçao Gaming Control Board is the body most often named in current claims. Shuffle.com states it holds a license from the Board to offer games of chance, and Casino Khajana says it is regulated and authorized by the Board to provide interactive games of chance via its website¹⁸. Casino Days, by contrast, cites an e-gaming license number instead. Whichever form the claim takes, the Board's own records are the place to confirm it before you rely on it.

For a player, the practical takeaway is not that every Curaçao license is fake. It is that a license claim, even a genuine one, tells you the operator passed a regulator's checks, and those checks vary in depth between regulators and, as this episode showed, can themselves be questioned. A license number on a website is a starting point, never the whole answer.

Licenses held by operators serving Asian players: TrustDice.win, Ganga Club and me88

To see how license claims look in practice, it helps to read what three sites popular with Asian players actually say about themselves. These are the operators' own claims, quoted from their own pages; each can be checked against the relevant register.

TrustDice.win states in its terms that it is licensed and regulated by the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA), and gives a Gaming Control Board license number, OGL/2024/664/0280, issued on July 16¹⁹. That number is in the current OGL format, which is the first thing to confirm. The next step would be to look the number up in the Curaçao register and check that the company and domain match.

Ganga Club, a site aimed at Indian players, claims on its own page a license from the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA)²⁰. It also describes itself as fully legal and safe in India, operating online only, and lists game providers including Pragmatic Play, JILI, Betsoft, Playtech and Spribe²⁰. The MGA claim is the notable one: the MGA publishes a register of its licensees and their approved domains, so this is a claim you can verify or disprove in minutes. An MGA license claim that does not appear in the MGA register, or that appears with a different domain, is false.

me88, which markets to players across Southeast Asia, states it is licensed by the Curaçao Gaming Authority for safe and secure gaming, and describes itself as a certified and officially licensed platform²¹. Note what is missing: no license number is given in that claim. A regulator name without a number is the weakest form of license claim, because there is nothing specific to check. It may well be genuine, but you cannot confirm it from the site's own words, and a site that holds a real license usually has nothing to hide about its number.

The pattern across these three is the lesson. One gives a full, current-format number. One names a regulator whose register is public and easy to search. One names a regulator with no number at all. All three are claims, and claims are checked, not trusted.

Moving between regulators: why Bitcasino left Curaçao for Anjouan

License claims also change over time, and a site's regulator today may not be its regulator next year. Bitcasino, a crypto casino with a large Asian player base, is a live example.

Bitcasino's terms have long stated that the website operates under a Curaçao gaming license issued by the CGA, The Curacao Gaming Authority, and that Bitcasino.io is owned and operated by Moon Technologies B.V., with a registered address at Schout Bij Nacht Doormanweg 40, P.O. Box 4745, Curaçao²².

Bitcasino.io states on its site that it operates under a Curaçao gaming license issued by the CGA (The Curacao Gaming Authority), and that it is owned and operated by Moon Technologies B.V., with a registered address in Curaçao²³. That combination, a named regulator plus a named operating company with an address, is exactly the kind of detail you can take to the regulator's register when checking a license claim.

Two things matter for a player here. First, when a site changes regulator, its old license claims linger across the internet: review sites, cached pages and old footer images may still say Curaçao while the site now runs on Anjouan. Neither claim is fake in itself, but only one is current, which is another reason to check the register rather than the seal. Second, the move shows that regulators compete for operators, and operators pick jurisdictions for commercial reasons, tax reasons or licensing-cost reasons. A change of regulator is routine business, not necessarily a warning sign, but it does mean a license claim has a date attached to it.

Checking a license yourself: what a listing does and does not prove

The core habit, from the UK Gambling Commission's own guidance, is to check that the gambling business holds a license, and then check that the details of the license, including activities and website domain names, match the public register³. That second half is where most fake claims fall apart.

Here is the check in practice, step by step:

1. Find the claim. Look in the site's footer or terms and conditions for a regulator name and a license number. No number at all is itself a warning sign¹.
2. Check the format. MGA numbers look like MGA/B2C/XXX/YYYY; current Curaçao numbers look like OGL/2024/1451/0918¹. A number in no recognizable format is almost certainly invented.
3. Open the regulator's register, not the site's link. Search the regulator's official site yourself rather than clicking the seal, because a cloned seal can link anywhere. PAGCOR's advice is the same in spirit: check its list of licensees on the PAGCOR website before accessing offshore gaming sites⁵.
4. Match the domain exactly. The register entry must list the domain you are actually playing on. A license held by a different company, or covering a different domain, does not cover the site in front of you³.
5. For Anjouan, use the verification page. A genuine Anjouan verification page shows the domain, the licensed company, the license number and a status such as VALID, as the CoinPoker example does for Precise Interactive Inc under License No. ALSI-202412004-FI1²⁴. Check the excluded territories list too, because the license may not cover your country¹³.

What does a listing prove, and what does it not? A genuine register listing proves that a regulator reviewed and accepted a specific company, for specific activities, on specific domains, at a specific time. It does not prove the site is fair to you personally, that it pays quickly, or that its games suit you. It does not even prove the license is still active today, which is why registers show status, and why we explain what an Anjouan license marked not active means and what happens when a gambling license is suspended or revoked elsewhere.

And what does a missing listing prove? If the regulator's register does not show the site, the site's license claim is false, whatever the seal looks like. That is the cleanest possible outcome of a check: you have caught a fake claim before it caught you. For the full walkthroughs, see our guides on how to check a gambling license and the public registers where each regulator lists its licensees.

What the law does not cover

One thing players often assume is that some law somewhere polices fake license claims directly. Mostly, it does not. Gambling laws in the region target gambling itself: who may offer it, who may play it, and where.

Singapore's Gambling Control Act 2022, for example, criminalizes gambling with an unlicensed gambling service provider or at an unlawful gambling place, and its provisions on false statements carve out exceptions for conduct within a casino and for class licensees providing gambling services according to a class license²⁵. The Act's age and exclusion provisions concern who may play, not what a website's footer says. Japan's integrated resort legislation similarly works by exempting licensed casino acts in the licensed casino area from the Penal Code's gambling articles, rather than by policing license claims²⁶. Thailand's Gambling Act BE 2478 prohibits almost all forms of betting and games of skill or chance with a real-money stake, except the State Lottery and horse racing, again saying nothing about license seals on foreign websites²⁷.

What this means in practice is that the law that matters to you is the law about playing, and it varies by country. In Japan, Penal Code Articles 185 and 186 do not apply to licensed casino acts in the licensed casino area of an integrated resort⁴. In Singapore, the Gambling Control Act 2022 explicitly does not extend to conduct within a casino, and Section 31 does not apply to gambling within any casino or to social gambling. Thailand's Gambling Act BE 2478 prohibits almost all forms of betting and games of skill or chance with a real-money stake, except the State Lottery and horse racing. The practical risk is simple: money deposited with a site holding no real license may be very hard to recover. That is why the check comes first, before the deposit, not after.