Players cheat to win money

On the Lichess chess platform, some chess tournaments are organized for prizes in different clubs to promote chess, but many cheat, win the money, and are banned after collecting so many prizes. Does Lichess really detect it late, when it's very obvious, or perhaps they use programs that are more difficult to detect? You can see an example in the following team:
lichess.org/team/biglindba-and-friends
where, if you look at their tournaments, there are a large number of people who have had their accounts closed for cheating. They even collected prizes, and that's what's most outrageous and the worst part is that in the end, they'll open another account and do the same thing again. There are even people who make a living from this, cheating in money tournaments. That was just one example because I'm sure the same thing happens on many other teams.
Lichess should really prohibit creating accounts with their IP addresses after so many cases of cheating.

They don't have a permanent IP adress, I guess.

Lichess does not even detect more obvious cases. Maybe it's run by 1500 OTB chess players or something like that. They don't care! But nothing is surprising in this horrible world run by horrible "entities" of course.

Lichess closes a cheater accounts. So e will obviously take longer to detect than others, but over time most are banned. But you can only ban after someone cheated, and all naïve approaches like "banning the IP" are bound to fail

Note that there is a difference between a closed account, an account banned for cheating, or banned for other reasons - and you might simply not know what happened, or misinterpret what you see.

If you are running tournaments with real prizes, I guess you are opening a huge honey pot. Maybe you should be more selective about the players who are eligible to join, if it turns out to be a problem.

Unfortunately with closed accounts you cannot look up their history, so I have no idea how long lisa_Rockstar or AnnaChess2007 were on the site when they built their ratings and entered your tournaments.

I do see another account who did well and was only a month old, and obviously you could put in some entry restrictions.

What I do note, however, is that the prize fund is very small (it's only 15 EUR?) and to collect the money, these players have to tell you who they really are (where to send the money). How many "cheat" accounts are happy to let out who is behind their alias, and what happens when they come back? They win again and have to tell you where to send the money, at which point you see it's someone who was previously closed for cheating.

(When I have paid individuals in the past via paypal I get told their real names. If you pay by bank transfer you get "It's A Match" if the name you enter matches the one on the account. Clearly all that has to be a requisite to pay them prize money, and it will certain deter cheats as their real names will enter a blacklist).

By the way, great to see there are tournaments for decent players to play 10+5. We need more of them, although Hybrid is the ideal way.

@earlpurple The accounts you mention were banned after two or three tournaments where they won prizes, and the team's creator apparently wants to encourage chess. They can actually send PayPal accounts of many family members, etc. Also, if they send theirs, what can the admin do? They don't lose anything. They can send any player's ID, and it's very difficult to verify that it's really that person. They can send another PayPal account, and so on. How do I say they lose? Exactly, nothing. So there's no logic. And currently, if you go to their tournaments, there are winners who haven't been banned yet and who have clearly cheated.
Your comment doesn't make any sense. I mean, if there's a $100 prize in a tournament, there won't be any cheaters? What's your logic? It seems like none.
It's simply not possible for someone who cheats to be banned and be able to open as many accounts as they want and continue doing so.

@nadjarostowa said in #3:
The accounts were closed for cheating. If the club administrator wants to promote and incentivize chess through prizes, it's to attract more people to join, not to reduce it. What you're saying isn't a solution. It's simply not possible for someone who cheats to be banned and be able to open as many accounts as they want and continue doing so.

@futuro_chess said in #6:

The accounts were closed for cheating. If the club administrator wants to promote and incentivize chess through prizes, it's to attract more people to join, not to reduce it. What you're saying isn't a solution. It's simply not possible for someone who cheats to be banned and be able to open as many accounts as they want and continue doing so.

Then, what is your suggestion?

I am afraid, there might not be a good solution to this problem at the moment, especially in detecting them "real time" or "preventing them from registering". And while there are certain systems in place to prevent some of it, realistically, it just won't work for everyone.

And offering real prizes will only incentivize cheating further - so I am afraid, you will always attract the bad guys.

I think only allowing long-standing accounts to participate, and defer the payment by two weeks or so (to allow any post-tournament checking) may help somewhat. But you'll face some die-hard cheaters either way, and some will prepare for every measure that you take. Not just for the money, but for the challenge.

My knowledge of paypal is that you do find out that is behind the account, and I doubt they're going to bring their families into it.

For a small prize fund of EUR 15 they're giving away their identity. Those who cheat prefer to remain hidden behind an alias.

Maybe name and shame the real names behind those accounts?

@earlpurple Well, now that you mention the amount was very small, I want you to see this tournament lichess.org/swiss/Z4irCpAv
where there are clearly also cheaters, and interestingly, there is one who won several tournaments on the previous team that I told you is VipMessiRO
who was recently banned in this tournament, after having won a lot of money in other tournaments, and as I said, without any consequences, other than closing his account. He can also create as many accounts as he wants, so he can continue doing so. Actually, there are no consequences.

All I see is that the winner now has a closed account. That tournament clearly had a lot more money, but in order for them to collect their money they have to tell you who they are, and you'd know if they're on a black list.

One day there will be hybrid tournaments.