France demands stronger proof before fraud action

• ANJ published new fraud guidance for licensed operators on 31 August 2026, following consultation with the industry and the gaming ombudsman.
• The guide sets an evidence standard covering identity fraud, payment fraud, chargebacks, poker cheating and sports betting manipulation.
• Recent French court rulings show operators losing disputes when they act on suspicion rather than documented proof.

France’s gambling regulator, the ANJ, has told licensed operators to build a proper evidence file before closing an account, withholding a balance or voiding a bet.

The guide, published on 31 August 2026 after talks with operators and the gaming ombudsman, doesn’t change the law. It spells out how operators are expected to apply the fraud and anti-money laundering rules already on the books.

Hunches don’t hold up in court

A hunch that a player is cheating isn’t enough to freeze their funds, according to ANJ. Operators need to show their working: IP addresses, device fingerprints, login timing, account access logs. The regulator walked through past French rulings to make the point concrete, and two cases in particular show what’s at stake.

Winamax lost one of them. On 1 July 2025, a Paris court found the operator couldn’t back up its fraud claim on five combination bets and ordered it to pay the player more than €400,000, plus a small residual balance sitting in the account.

Betclic fared better on the fraud finding itself, though not entirely. In February 2026, the Paris court of appeal accepted evidence including shared IP addresses, shared devices and a run of near-identical bets placed minutes apart. The account closure stood, but the operator was still ordered to repay more than €32,000, since nothing showed that balance had actually come from the fraud.

The account takeover problem

ANJ also tackled identity and payment fraud head-on. Once fraud is established, operators can shut the account down. If they can’t confirm who owns a linked bank account, they can hold the balance rather than pay it out.

The regulator wants tighter controls around account takeovers specifically: two-factor authentication whenever a player changes their banking details or asks for a withdrawal. It’s a narrow fix aimed at a common weak point, and it lines up with ANJ’s broader read on the sector this year, after it found operators generally had the staff and systems in place but still needed better risk scoring and cleaner reporting.

Poker bots, chargebacks and a busier mediator

Poker gets its own carve-out. ANJ wants operators writing contract terms that let them claw back winnings won through collusion or bot play, something French courts have already backed when operators bring solid technical evidence.

Sports manipulation, money dumping and chargeback abuse round out the list, which the regulator left open rather than closed.

None of this arrives in a quiet year. Betting volumes spiked during the World Cup, with French punters staking a record €1.3bn, and disputes have climbed with them. The gaming regulator logged 1,856 complaints in 2025, up 20% on 2024, mostly over blocked accounts, withdrawals and cancelled bets.

The guide also slots into a busier year for ANJ on the enforcement side. In July, it hit an unnamed operator with a €500,000 fine for missing at-risk players, and it’s been pushing operators toward firmer safer gambling results before a 2027 deadline.

For operators, the takeaway is procedural rather than legal: tighten the paper trail. A fraud call that isn’t backed by evidence is a fraud call a French court is increasingly likely to reverse.