Brazilian prosecutors investigate influencers over disguised illegal betting ads

Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into three reality TV personalities, Big Brother Brasil winner Davi Brito, his sister Raquel Brito, and former A Fazenda contestant Bia Miranda, over Instagram posts promoting gambling sites after the country’s betting ban took effect. According to BNLData, the complaints that triggered the inquiry came through the Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Citizens’ Rights, and the alleged conduct falls under the betting ban Brazil’s government put in place under provisional measure 1,394/2026, signed September 25.

What the prosecutors describe isn’t subtle once you see the pattern: links dropped into ordinary Instagram Stories, framed as word-guessing games or general entertainment rather than gambling, that led followers straight to real-money betting platforms. Bia Miranda reportedly told her audience “it’s not a bet, it’s not a wager, you have to complete the word to win.” Davi Brito called one of the links a “resenha boa,” roughly “good hangout” or “good vibes.” Neither framing holds up once someone actually clicks through, which is the entire basis of the complaint, the platforms were dressed up as something other than what they are specifically so the posts wouldn’t read as gambling promotion. Investigators are also looking at a separate group of smaller-audience influencers who may have simply swapped which operators they promote, moving from licensed brands to unlicensed ones once the ban made the legal ones unavailable to advertise.

None of this has been resolved. Davi Brito has denied wrongdoing publicly, posting that silence shouldn’t be read as guilt and that he isn’t losing sleep over the inquiry, while Raquel Brito and Bia Miranda haven’t commented. Brazilian press coverage hasn’t detailed what specific penalties the MPF is weighing, administrative sanctions and advertising restrictions are the standard tools available to it, with criminal referral possible if evidence supports it, but none of that has been formally proposed in this case yet. What is clear is the direction of enforcement: Brazil has spent the weeks since the ban going after operators’ payment rails, their advertising, and now the people getting paid to put that advertising in front of an audience, which makes the influencer layer of this market measurably riskier than it was a month ago.