How to Identify Sharp Syndicate Groups and Catch Cheaters in Your Sportsbook

What is “Sharping” and how does it work?

When we talk about “sharping” in this article we are referring to the syndicate betting groups that break the rules of every sportsbook by flat out cheating. These groups exploit an illegal strategy method called past-posting to exploit stale live lines and make profits from bookies. They achieve this by sending people to games to observe and report real-time events. This information is then relayed to someone placing bets, allowing them to take advantage of the delay in updating the live lines.

“Sharping” in this article does NOT refer to individuals who will win in the long run by buying picks, using implied probabilities and EV, arbitraging lines to find deals, or other edges.

These sharp groups are cheating the sportsbook for the following reasons:

• Sharing accounts and betting on someone else's behalf is strictly prohibited and will result in not being paid out. (Every sportsbook has this rule and it is also displayed on the rules section of our site as well)
• Sidelining a game is illegal and will result in permanent bans at every sporting event.
• It is a cheating method and wildly unfair to the bookmaker.

To prevent this, ask your customer service to delay the live betting line by 20 seconds and add a 15-25 second cooldown.

What this will do is: let's say a line is at -115 and a player goes to place a bet down on that line. The bet will stay pending there for 20 seconds and if the line does not change in that time then the bet is accepted. If the line changes during that time to -150 then they will have to agree to the new line of -150 and wait another 20 seconds for the bet to either be accepted if the line stays the same or for the site to ask if they agree to the changed line.

Implementing these measures will prevent individuals from cheating your live betting system and help uphold the integrity of sports betting.

If you believe someone has been winning heavily on live lines and question if they are sharping, use the following methods to see if they were or not:

• Check their IP addresses: This is always the first thing you should do and it can be a telltale sign of someone sharing their account (which gives you all the reason to not pay them). If someone's winning big, always check their IP addresses to see if it was actually them who placed the bets. The way sharps work is they get people to go out and get them accounts and they play those accounts and give the person whose account it was a percentage of the winnings. It's far more likely that you are dealing with an agent that works for the sharp as opposed to the sharp himself. In this case, if he's in NY one moment then Vegas an hour later you know his accounts are being shared and that constitutes not paying him (Fanduel/Draftkings don't payout when people share accounts so you shouldn't either). (Infobyip.com is a great way to take the IP addresses from the website and see exactly where the player was betting from)
• See if they're winning on live bets: What sharps do is they send people to games and have them on the phone while they live bet the games through computer programs that will hook into these offshore books (this method only works on offshore sites; it does not work on Fanduel/Draftkings as they have invested substantial amounts of money into their sites). If they're only betting lives all day long and winning, then it's most likely a sharp.
• Get the player on the phone: Call the player and have their account disabled so they can't see the inside while you're on the phone. Ask him about his bets; if he doesn't know what he placed the night before when he just won $500, then there's a major issue with that. You just proved it wasn't him who was playing the account and he should not be paid and be kicked off.
• Roll the player over: If you suspect they are sharp, roll them over a week or two weeks. Most sharps will continue to play their agents’ accounts and eventually have a slip up with them or one of their assistants logging into the account without a VPN which in turn exposes a location that the player could not have possibly been in.
• High credit limits: Sharps will always want a higher credit limit and they'll do anything to prove they have the money to pay on time. They do have this money and they are not lying about that but they will win far more than they lose in the long run. This does not mean a player is sharping but can be reason to check a player's action.