Authorities in Romania have uncovered what appears to be a multi-million Euro fraud involving online gambling operators.

The alleged fraud involves the payment of substantial prizes to a limited number of players and is suspected to be designed to lower the gross gaming revenue (GGR) of licensed gambling operators, and thereby their tax liability to the state.

Romanian gambling regulator ONJN said that in the case of online operators, the fraud was made possible because the regulator did not have adequate access to monitoring servers until the beginning of 2026.

“At the time of my assumption of office, on April 25, 2025, ONJN did not have real access to the mirror servers of the remote gambling organisers,” said ONJN president Vlad-Cristian Soare. “This situation has its origins in the past, being an aspect noted by the Court of Auditors in the report for 2023, a situation that was maintained throughout 2024.

“Also, the 12 mandatory reports provided for by law could not be downloaded from the platforms of remote gambling organisers and, therefore, effective monitoring was not carried out. Following access to the mirror servers of remote gambling organisers, downloading event reports and analysing winnings greater than €15,000, anomalies incompatible with the real chances of winning were identified,” Soare added.

The ONJN has released the details of several online gaming accounts which suggest that the accounts were used to syphon money out of operators and reduce their reported GGR.

The ONJN said that the winnings discovered were unreasonably large, repetitive in nature, and in identical, abnormally exact amounts.

In December 2025, one player account had 60 wins totalling RON7.0 million (approx. €1.37 million), while another showed 84 wins in a “very short space of time” totalling €2.60 million.

In another example, a player account had 33 winnings in October 2025 totalling approximately €1.1 million, including 31 wins in a single day, with the same account going on to win 45 times in November 2025, including 32 wins in a single day, netting a further €1.2 million.

Three other accounts highlighted by the Romanian gambling regulator had combined wins of more than €1.7 million, often in a single day.

“The pattern is obvious: numerous wins, concentrated on the same day or in the same month, in almost identical amounts and of very large values, which raises serious suspicions about the way the GGR is reported and calculated,” Soare explained.

“All these aspects generate the legitimate suspicion that certain operators are reducing their tax base (GGR) by granting prizes to accounts held through intermediaries.”

All of the suspect accounts are now being investigated, and if the suspicions are confirmed, their cases will be handed to anti-money laundering authorities and the criminal prosecution service.

The ONJN has also found evidence of bonuses being deducted from GGR, which is illegal under Romania’s gambling legislation.

In a separate case, the ONJN expects to recover RON100 million (approx. €19.6 million) from online gaming operators for applying an incorrect tax rate in 2023 and 2024. This followed an increase in gambling taxes under Government Decree no. 15/2022.

The regulator stressed that the incorrect application of taxes was not an attempt to defraud the government, noting that the discrepancy was due to an incorrect interpretation of the law by both the ONJN and licensed operators. 

Soare said: “The Court of Auditors invalidated this point of view and established that the new tax regime also applies to pending authorisations. Under my leadership, the checks were carried out, and the differences – amounting to RON100 million – were established and transmitted to ANAF.”

ANAF is the National Agency for Fiscal Administration.

Soare added: “Considering the issues identified by the Court of Auditors in the case of remote gambling organisers, we have started an analysis to identify payment differences in the case of land-based gambling organisers as well, differences resulting from the non-application of the increased tax level under Executive Order no. 82/2023.”

 “I know that the information presented may generate strong reactions,” Soare concluded. “There will be a temptation to resume the narrative of banning gambling. This is a false solution. You can’t ban human behaviour. Banning it moves the phenomenon to the black market, where the state no longer has any control. In 2025, at the European Union level, the black market represented approximately 72 per cent of total online transactions – about €80 billion.

He added: “The real solution is a new gambling law: one built on the problems reported by civil society, which would strengthen the state’s supervision and allow serious operators to operate under strict control, enjoying predictability and, most importantly, eliminating the competitive advantage of those in the grey or black zone, against which no rules and no taxes apply.”