Brazil’s betting regulator rejects claims of fraud in central self-exclusion system

Brazil’s Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) has moved to reassure operators over alleged fraud in the national self-exclusion scheme, stressing that there are no official complaints recorded in the System of Betting Management (Sigap) about misuse of the tool.

Brazil’s Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA), part of the Ministry of Finance, has publicly clarified how the country’s centralised self-exclusion platform works after private operators warned of alleged “fraud schemes” involving bettors who try to use the tool to obtain undue refunds.

In a statement sent to local outlet Poder360, SPA said that, as of mid-January 2026, there are no official reports in the Sistema de Gestão de Apostas (Sigap) of users misusing the Centralised Self-Exclusion Platform for fraudulent purposes. The regulator underlined that the platform was designed as a responsible-gambling measure to protect vulnerable players, not as a mechanism to dispute losing bets.

SPA also detailed the technical workflow laid out in Normative Instruction SPA/MF No. 31/2025. Once a player files a self-exclusion request on the gov.br portal, every time an operator’s system consults Sigap at the next login attempt, it receives a “blocked” status for that CPF. From that moment, the operator must remove the player from its active customer base within a maximum of 72 hours, and may do so immediately after the request is registered.

The clarification comes after some betting companies told the press that a minority of customers were allegedly trying to game the system by placing calculated bets and, after losses, entering self-exclusion and demanding full reimbursement on the grounds that they had “asked for protection”. SPA’s response makes clear that such disputes have not been formally logged as fraud in Sigap and that operators remain bound by their own terms and conditions and by federal regulation when assessing refund requests.

The regulator emphasised that the centralised self-exclusion platform – developed with state tech company Serpro and accessible at gov.br/autoexclusaoapostas – remains a cornerstone of Brazil’s responsible gambling framework, allowing any citizen to block access to all licensed betting sites in a single step for periods ranging from one month to an indefinite term.

By publicly rejecting the narrative of widespread abuse and restating the legal obligations around Sigap integration, SPA is signalling to both operators and players that the self-exclusion system must be treated as a public-health tool, not a transactional loophole – and that any substantiated fraud attempts will have to be handled through existing enforcement channels.