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UK – £6.1m fine for online operator In Touch Games

A gambling business will pay a £6.1m penalty after a Gambling Commission investigation revealed social responsibility and money laundering failings.

In Touch Games – which operates 11 webbplatser including bonusboss.co.uk, cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com and slotfactory.com – failed a compliance assessment last March.

Misslyckanden med socialt ansvar inkluderar:

• Inte interagera med en kund förrän sju veckor efter att de hade flaggats för interaktion på grund av oregelbundna spelmönster och långa spelperioder.
• Acceptera en kunds ord om att de tjänade £6,000 XNUMX i månaden utan att verifiera denna information efter att kundkontot flaggades på grund av kundutgifter och spelande under osociala timmar.

Anti-money laundering failures included not adequately taking account of the risk of a customer being a beneficiary of a life insurance policy ; having links to high-risk jurisdictions; or being a politically exposed person (“PEP”), family member of a PEP or known close associates of a PEP, within its money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment.

It was also charged with not having policies, procedures and controls in place to address the risk factors mentioned above, not sufficiently considering the Commission’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment or the Commission’s guidance and not ensuring its policies, procedures and controls were implemented effectively, for example not following its own policy to request source of funds information from customers who had deposited and lost £10,000 in a 12-month period.

This is the third time ITG have faced regulatory action – in 2019 it paid a £2.2m settlement for regulatory failures and in 2021 it received a £3.4m fine 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.”