The UK Gambling Commission has announced that it has fined online gambling operator In Touch Games (ITG) £6.1 million (€6.9 million) for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.
According to the announcement, the company runs 11 gambling websites including bonusboss.co.uk, cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com and slotfactory.com.
The commission revealed the social responsibility failings included:
- Allowing a customer to continue to display erratic play patterns and extended periods of play for seven weeks before making contact.
- Failure to verify the source of funds for a customer and accepting their word that their salary was £6,000 (€6,787) a month.
Anti-money laundering failures included:
- Failing to recognize that a customer was a beneficiary of a life insurance policy; had links to high-risk jurisdictions; or was a politically exposed person (“PEP”) – These are standard identifiers within the company’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment.
- Insufficient policies, procedures and controls in place to manage the potential risks mentioned above.
- Failure to follow the Commission’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment guidance
- Failure to request source of funds information from customers who had deposited and lost £10,000 (€11,312) in a 12-month period.
This is the third time in four years that ITG has faced financial penalties. In 2019 it paid a £2.2 million settlement for regulatory failures. The company then received a £3.4 million fine in 2021 and warning for further failures.
Kay Roberts, Executive Director of Operations, said:
“Considering this operator’s history of failings we expected to see significant improvement when we carried out our planned compliance assessment. Disappointingly, although many improvements had been made, there was still more to do.
“This £6.1m fine shows that we will take escalating enforcement action where failures are repeated and all licensees should be acutely aware of this.”
This is largest financial penalty imposed so far in 2023 and brings the total for 2023 to more than €9.1 million. According to research by USA-Casino.com, gambling industry fines 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.
Olivia has worked as an editor and writer for major brands across multiple niches. She now focuses on the iGaming and sports betting industries.
