Pixbet loses iGaming license after raids in $290 million Brazil laundering probe

Missing paperwork, not a specific finding of wrongdoing, is what the Ministry cited as its official reason: Pixbet and its sister platforms, Ganhei.bet and Bet da Sorte, hadn’t handed over information regulators need to actually oversee how the operators run day to day. All three share the same suspended license, so none of them can keep taking bets while it stays pulled, regardless of which brand a user actually signed up under.

This isn’t SPA’s first run at Pixbet either — the regulator had already suspended the company’s license twice earlier this year over separate issues before this latest action. This time, resuming operations means submitting the missing information, passing a compliance review, and refunding every user deposit in the meantime; skipping that costs 200,000 reais, about $39,200, for each day the platforms keep running anyway despite the order.

A court froze up to 1.1 billion reais, about $210 million, in assets tied to the case — the clearest sign yet of how much money investigators think moved through the alleged scheme. That freeze came out of Operation Arena, a joint push by federal police, prosecutors, and tax authorities that carried out 19 raids across five Brazilian states in a single coordinated sweep targeting the group tied to Pixbet.

The most striking find in the case file: transactions registered under the identities of 549 dead people, some of whom had been deceased for more than two decades before the alleged activity took place. Investigators say those records were part of a broader laundering operation that moved roughly $290 million abroad and cycled it back into Brazil through fake contracts, foreign shell companies, and crypto transactions designed to obscure where the money actually originated.