The U.K. Gambling Commission (UKGC) has fined operator 888 Casino a whopping £9.4 million (US$12.6 million) over social responsibility and money laundering failures, including setting its deposit threshold for financial checks at £40,000. Those failures enabled customers to rack up huge losses during the Covid pandemic.
UKGC chief Andrew Rhodes warned that a repeat of this behavior may result in the company losing its license, according to iGaming Business.
Breaches included prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, and measures for operators in foreign jurisdictions. 888 also failed to comply with the social responsibility code as it relates to customer interaction and remote identification of individual customers, who may be at risk of gambling harm as it pertains to affordability checks, at the threshold of £40,000.
The firm failed to interact with a customer who lost £37,000 in six weeks during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a separate case, 888 also allowed an NHS worker that earned £1,400 a month to set a monthly deposit cap of £1,300.
Another customer was allowed to spend £65,835 in just five months without source-of-funds checks being carried out.
In the wake of these issues, the UKGC will require 888 to conduct a third-party audit within 12 months of the review to see if the company implemented its anti-money laundering and social responsibility policies, procedures, and controls
“Today’s fine is one of our largest to date, and all should be clear that if there is a repeat of the failures at 888, then we have to seriously consider the suitability of the operator to uphold the licensing objectives and keep gambling safe and crime-free,” commissioners stated.
Responding to the ruling, 888 accepted the decision and said that since the compliance assessment concluded in October 2020, it has taken “immediate and appropriate” action to improve its internal policies and procedures.
That audit found that most of the company’s social responsibility interactions with customers consisted of a single email describing the available responsible gambling tools and did not involve customer interaction, according to The Guardian.
“We recognize our responsibility to make gambling safer and regret that previous implementation of our processes failed to meet required standards in the U.K.,” said 888 CEO Itai Pazner.
In addition, 888 has launched Control Centre, a customer-focused interface that enables customers to monitor their gambling activity through, real-time data, and the establishment of a new ESG committee of the board.
Rhodes pointed out that this was 888’s second big fine, after it was hit with a £7.8 million penalty in 2017, a record at the time. “Consumers in Britain deserve to know that when they gamble, they are participating in a leisure activity where operators play their part in keeping them safe and are carrying out checks to ensure money is crime-free,” he said.
The online casino company also failed to carry out proper “source of funds” (SOF) checks to prevent money laundering. This included accepting verbal assurances from customers on their employment income, not setting out which documents should be requested as part of SOF checks.
