The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has issued Skill On Net Limited with a fine of £305,150 (€350,437) following an investigation which revealed social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failures.
Skill On Net runs 50 websites including gentingcasino.com, playtoro.com, slingo.com, and playojo.com.
The UKGC’s investigation revealed that between January 2021 and December 2022, Skill on Net had breached its licensing conditions on numerous occasions. These breaches included insufficient AML policies, procedures and controls and weaknesses in the implementation of best practices for AML procedures.
AML failings
The Commission found the following AML failings at Skill On Net websites:
- Failure to consider customer’s salary or wealth to identify disproportionate spend
- Over-reliance on customers’ declarations to mitigate the ML risks posed
- failure to profile customers based on the Licensees’ Risk Assessment
- Failure to provide an annual report covering the operation and effectiveness of the operator’s systems and controls to combat ML
Social responsibility failings
- Failure to identify customers who may be showing signs of problem gambling following big wins
- Customers allowed to deposit and gamble high value bets at high velocity without implementation of safer gambling controls
- One customer allowed to deposit and lose up to £3,000 per month which was more than their declared salary
- Allowing one customer to have a seven-hour session at night while phone was on autoplay
- Failure to effectively interact with some customers by relying upon automated pop-ups
- Minimal customer interactions with those showing signs of problem gambling
The UKGC has stated that the fine will go towards socially responsible gambling causes while Skill On Net must also pay £9,079 (€10,427) in costs for the investigation. The company will go through an independent third-party audit within the next 12 months.
This brings the total fines for 2023 to more than £50,171,570 (€57,698,532). Gambling industry financial penalties in 2022 came to €251,712,034 / $269,532,490 – a significant increase of 443.9% compared to 2021’s total of €44,753,969 / $48,642,992.
Ciaran has been working within the Gambling Industry as a deep analyst since 2019. His deep knowledge and understanding of all the gambling regulations, and processes makes him a true asset, and an always valuable point of view for Gambling Industry News, allowing us to cover every topics from a brand new perspective.