How We Fact-Check Every Article — Our Trusted Sources
Our editorial fact-checking and sources process: named primary authorities for every claim, independent RNG labs, and practical steps for verifying a PAGCOR licence yourself.
Every claim on this site about a PAGCOR-licensed operator — every licence number, payment-processing rule, and RNG certification — is checked against a named primary source before it is published. That commitment to fact-checking and sources is not a formality; it is the foundation of everything we write.
With the CICC having flagged more than 1,007 unlicensed online-gambling sites in the Philippines in 2025 alone, knowing which sources are lehitimo matters. A single misattributed licence number can point a reader toward a scam. This page explains how our editorial team verifies every piece of information, which authorities we rely on, and how you can run those same checks yourself.
Table of contents
- How we fact-check every article
- The hierarchy of sources we trust
- Our trusted sources
- How to verify an online casino yourself
- Corrections and transparency
- Frequently asked questions
- Conclusion
How we fact-check every article
Our process has three non-negotiable steps: identify the primary source first, tie every factual claim to a specific and linkable authority, and put every article through peer review before it goes live. No step is optional, and no deadline shortens it.
Primary sources before anything else
A primary source is the original authority — PAGCOR’s own licence list, the BSP’s published circular, BIR’s officially gazetted tax rates. A secondary source is anyone reporting on those authorities, including us.
The rule I apply in practice is simple: go to the primary source first. If a PAGCOR licence number is in question, I do not check a competitor’s review — I pull the record from pagcor.ph directly. If a GCash deposit rule has changed, I read the BSP circular (M-2025-029, August 2025), not the casino’s FAQ page. This habit is harder to form than it sounds, but it is the only reliable defence against errors compounding across websites.
A named source for every claim
“Studies show” is not a source. Neither is “industry experts say.” Every specific claim in our articles — a licence number, a tax withholding rate, an RNG certification, a CICC block count — is attributed to the named authority that published it.
Licence numbers link to PAGCOR’s verification page. Tax figures come directly from BIR.gov.ph: winnings over ₱10,000 trigger a 20% final withholding tax (BIR Form 2306); sports-betting wins over ₱5,000 trigger 8%. RNG certification claims name the specific test lab — eCOGRA, iTech Labs, GLI, or BMM Testlabs — not “an independent laboratory.” If I cannot name the source, I do not make the claim.
Peer review and review dates
Before any article is published, a second editor — someone who did not write the draft — checks every factual claim against its stated source. The process takes longer, but it catches the errors that a writer’s eye has learned to skip over.
Every article on this site carries three pieces of attribution: the author’s name and qualification, the date it was first published, and the date it was last reviewed. These are not cosmetic details — they tell you how recent the information is and who stands behind it.
The hierarchy of sources we trust
Not all sources carry equal weight, and I want to be transparent about the order in which we apply them.
First tier — Philippine government and regulatory authorities. PAGCOR, BSP, BIR, AMLC, NPC, and related official bodies sit at the top. When a PAGCOR-licensed operator’s status is disputed, the PAGCOR record is definitive. When a payment rule is unclear, the BSP circular takes precedence over anything a casino’s FAQ might say.
Second tier — independent international testing labs. eCOGRA, iTech Labs (a GLI subsidiary since 2023), GLI, and BMM Testlabs audit the random-number generators behind every slot spin and card draw. Their certifications matter because they are conducted by organisations with no commercial stake in the game’s outcome — something an operator can never claim about its own fairness statements.
Third tier — academic and public-health authorities. Peer-reviewed research from UP Diliman and Ateneo de Manila, and health data from the WHO, inform our responsible-gaming content. This tier supplements regulatory data; it does not replace it.
Fourth tier — the operators themselves. Official casino pages, press releases, and terms-and-conditions documents are useful for self-reported information, but we never rely on them alone. Operator copy is always cross-checked against regulator records or independent certification data. A marketing page calling a casino “fully licensed and fair” is a claim. The PAGCOR licence list and a test-lab certificate are facts.
Our trusted sources
Below is the complete list of authorities we cite, grouped by type. Domains are provided so you can verify each source yourself.
Philippine authorities
| Authority | Domain | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| PAGCOR — Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation | pagcor.ph | Licence verification, operator status, responsible-gaming rules, self-exclusion programme |
| BSP — Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas | bsp.gov.ph | E-wallet and payment regulations, consumer-finance circulars including M-2025-029 (August 2025) |
| BIR — Bureau of Internal Revenue | bir.gov.ph | Tax rules: 20% final withholding on casino winnings over ₱10,000; 8% on sports-betting wins over ₱5,000 |
| PCSO — Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office | pcso.gov.ph | Charity-gaming and national lottery authority |
| AMLC — Anti-Money Laundering Council | amlc.gov.ph | AML/KYC compliance framework for gaming operators |
| CICC — Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center | cicc.gov.ph | Tracking and blocking unlicensed online-gambling sites; flagged 1,007+ illegal operators in 2025 |
| NPC — National Privacy Commission | privacy.gov.ph | Data-protection authority under the Data Privacy Act; player data-rights questions |
| PSA — Philippine Statistics Authority | psa.gov.ph | Official population, demographic, and internet-penetration data for the Philippines |
Independent testing and international standards
| Organisation | Domain | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|
| eCOGRA (est. 2003, UK) | ecogra.org | Independent RNG testing, game audits, and player-protection certification |
| iTech Labs (est. 2004; GLI subsidiary since 2023) | itechlabs.com | RNG and game-fairness testing; now part of the GLI group (acquisition 2023) |
| GLI — Gaming Laboratories International | gaminglabs.com | Global gaming test lab and certification body; parent company of iTech Labs since 2023 |
| BMM Testlabs (est. 1981) | bmm.com | One of the oldest independent gaming test labs in the world; RNG and compliance certification |
| WHO — World Health Organization | who.int | Health data, gambling-harm and addiction research for responsible-gaming content |
| UP Diliman / Ateneo de Manila University | upd.edu.ph / ateneo.edu | Peer-reviewed academic research on gambling behaviour and social impact in the Philippines |
How to verify an online casino yourself
You do not need to take our word for it. Every check we run is one you can run yourself, in a matter of minutes.
- Check the PAGCOR licence. Go to pagcor.ph and search the published list of licensed operators. A casino’s licence number should appear there. If it does not, the site is operating without authorisation in the Philippines — a legal and safety risk for every player on it.
- Look for a test-lab certification seal. A legitimate casino displays a seal from eCOGRA, iTech Labs, GLI, or BMM Testlabs. Click the seal — it should open a live verification page on the lab’s own domain. A static image with no click-through is not a real certificate.
- Confirm SSL encryption. Your browser’s address bar should show a padlock icon and an HTTPS address. The absence of SSL means your data is transmitted without encryption — a basic security failure that no licensed operator should have.
- Cross-reference the CICC list. The CICC (cicc.gov.ph) publishes information on sites it has flagged or blocked for operating illegally. If an operator appears on that list, treat it as a definitive red flag, regardless of what its own marketing claims.
These four steps take less time than reading a full review, and they draw from the same primary sources we use. The difference between a legit (lehitimo) casino and a scam is, in most cases, a thirty-second licence check on pagcor.ph.
Corrections and transparency
Errors happen. When a regulator updates a rule, when a licence status changes, or when new data supersedes what we published — the article can fall behind the facts. Our policy is to correct it promptly, date the correction, and note precisely what changed and why.
If you find a factual error in any article on this site, use the contact page to report it with the specific claim and, where possible, the primary source that contradicts it. A second editor reviews every correction request before any change is made. Corrections are appended to the article with a date — never silently edited so the original error disappears without trace.
On AI transparency: I use AI-assisted tools in the drafting and research stages. Every article produced with AI assistance is reviewed and fact-checked by a human editor before it is published. No AI output goes live without verification against named primary sources. The fact-checking process described on this page applies to AI-assisted content exactly as it applies to fully human-written pieces.
Frequently asked questions
Conclusion
Our commitment to fact-checking and sources exists for one reason: every figure you read on this site should have a named authority behind it that you can verify yourself. We use PAGCOR, BSP, BIR, independent test labs, and other primary sources because the Philippine online-gaming market has too many unlicensed operators for anything less to be defensible. We name those sources because unnamed claims are not facts. And we welcome corrections because no editorial process — however careful — is infallible.
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