INFLUENCER MARKETING
that has grown by 38 percent since 2022 despite the rapid expansion of legal alternatives 3 . The illegal market is not a transient residue of inadequate legal options. It is a durable and self-sustaining structure, and its longevity depends on its ability to recruit. What happens, then, when a legal system decides to treat the “front door” as part of the criminal structure it facilitates? That is precisely the question that Argentina's specialized gambling prosecution unit – the Fiscalía Especializada en Juegos de Azar, or FEJA – has brought to the fore. For the first time in the region, social media influencers have faced criminal charges not for the content of their posts, but for the functional impact of those posts: operating a capture system for illegal gambling platforms. And in several cases, the resolution of those charges has produced something genuinely novel: a mechanism that leverages the influencers' own platforms and audiences to counteract their previous activities. FEJA: A Specialized Prosecution Unit Built for a Digital Problem The FEJA was established by Resolution FG 73/2024 of the Public Prosecutor's Office of the City of Buenos Aires. It operates under Argentina's federal system, in which gambling regulation is constitutionally reserved to the provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. In Buenos Aires, the competent authority for gambling licenses is LOTBA – Lotería de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires S.A.U – a public entity established by city law to authorize, organize, and supervise all gambling activities within its territory 4 . Any gambling operation targeting Buenos Aires residents without LOTBA authorization is illegal, and FEJA's mandate is to investigate and prosecute those entities. The case for building a specialized unit for this purpose may not be immediately self-evident to everyone, but it is essential.
Digital gambling investigations are technically demanding in ways that general criminal prosecutors are not equipped to handle without dedicated training, such as identifying unlicensed platforms among thousands of online operators, collecting and preserving digital evidence from social media and messaging apps, tracing financial flows through virtual wallets and informal payment networks, and understanding the architecture of multi-actor criminal systems that span multiple jurisdictions and platforms. Specialization is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite for effective enforcement. FEJA's results since its inception demonstrate the return on that investment. The unit has initiated investigations against more than 500 individuals and has developed, through direct operational experience, both a legal theory and a set of enforcement tools that have no precise precedent in the region. Influencers as Operators of Illegal Gambling Capture Systems The legal framework applied by FEJA is Article 301 bis of the Argentine Criminal Code, incorporated in 2016. The provision penalizes anyone who exploits, administers, operates, or in any manner organizes (personally or through third parties) any modality or system for the capture of gambling without the authorization of the competent jurisdictional authority. The penalty ranges from three to six years' imprisonment. What makes this provision well-suited to the digital gambling context is its focus on the "capture system" rather than the platform itself. An illegal online gambling operation is not a single actor; it is a decentralized structure. The platform's technical operators oversee the software and manage the mechanics of the game. The "Cashiers" – a network of informal intermediaries – create user accounts, receive deposits via digital payment apps, handle withdrawals, and communicate with players through rotating messaging accounts. Finally,
3 Bill Miller, 'Protecting the legal gaming ecosystem – one illegal market at a time,' IMGL Magazine Vol. 6 No. 1 (March 2026) 4 Argentine National Constitution, Article 121. Law 5,785 of the City of Buenos Aires creates LOTBA S.A.U. as the competent authority for authoriz- ing, organizing, and supervising gambling in Buenos Aires
IMGL MAGAZINE | JUNE 2026
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