INFLUENCER MARKETING
influencers sit at the top of the recruitment funnel: they reach mass audiences through their social media channels, post promotional content with referral links and bonus codes, and direct their followers into the cashier network. Each component of this structure operates a distinct but essential part of the same illegal capture system. The influencer's role within that structure is not incidental. Without effective mass recruitment, without the ability to convert followers into gamblers at scale, the unlicensed platform cannot compete for market share. This point has been analyzed in depth by Argentine legal scholars 5 and is reflected in the enforcement data accumulated by FEJA: the promotional activity of influencers is systematic, professional, and commercially structured, incorporating agreed fees, referral bonuses, and content calendars. It is, in every functional sense, the operation of a recruitment system. Argentina has established a clear and publicly available marker of licensed gambling – the “.bet.ar” domain, reserved by regulation for authorized operators 6 – meaning that influencers who promoted platforms outside that domain had an objective, easily verifiable basis for assessing legality, yet chose to proceed regardless. A Regional First: Criminal Charges Against Influencers in Illegal Gambling The decision to pursue criminal charges against influencers under Article 301 bis represents to the first known instance in the Latin American region of social media influencers facing criminal prosecution specifically for operating the recruitment systems of illegal online gambling platforms. The scale of the investigation is also notable, because FEJA has brought charges against hundreds of individuals, not as a symbolic action, but as a systematic effort to reach the entire visible layer of the illegal gambling recruitment infrastructure.
The influencers charged range from major public figures with millions of followers to smaller-scale content creators operating in niche gaming communities. What they share is a pattern of conduct: regular posts and stories on Instagram and similar platforms, with links directing followers to the cashier networks of unlicensed gambling platforms. In many cases, the same influencer simultaneously promoted several competing illegal platforms, behavior that confirms the commercial and independent nature of their activity. A foundational jurisdictional question – could the city's courts prosecute influencers physically located outside Buenos Aires? – was resolved in FEJA's favor by two decisions of the city's Criminal Appeals Court 7 . Both chambers applied the well-established principle of territorial ubiquity: an offense is committed wherever its effects materialize, and the recruitment activity of influencers based outside the city nonetheless produced its effects within it, capturing Buenos Aires residents and directing them toward unlicensed platforms operating without LOTBA's authorization 8 . Turning the Channel Around: The Reparation Agreement Model The most distinctive and instructive aspect of FEJA's enforcement experience is not the criminal charges themselves; it is the resolution of cases without going to trial. Argentine procedural law provides for an alternative resolution mechanism (the reparation agreement) through which criminal liability can be extinguished by full reparation of the harm caused, subject to judicial approval 9 . To date, FEJA has reached dozens of such agreements with influencers who were investigated for promoting illegal online gambling platforms. Those agreements, all validated by trial court judges after a legality review, were not simply financial: they required the influencers to complete a specialized awareness
5 Rodolfo Ariza Clerici and Maximiliano Ruiz, 'Influencers y las apuestas ilegales en línea,' La Ley, Derecho Penal y Criminología, Year XV, No. 11 (December 2025) 6 Disposición 68/2019, Dirección Nacional del Registro de Dominios de Internet (DNRDI) 7 CCyAPPJCF, Sala I, case 94.102/2024-0 (April 3, 2025); Sala III, case 100178/2024-1 (December 27, 2024) 8 Argentine Supreme Court (CSJN, Fallos 313:823) 9 Argentine Criminal Code, Article 59(6), as amended by Law 27,147
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IMGL MAGAZINE | JUNE 2026
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