It’s Second Time Round for 888 with Heftier Fine
Online operator 888 has been handed a fine of more than £9m by the UK Gambling Commission for multiple anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings, the second fine handed to the popular casino operator within a 5-year period. The news came just 5-days after BV Gaming Limited, trading as Bet Victor, was also ordered to pay £2m for fairness, social responsibility, and money laundering failures.
Social responsibility failures which led to the £9.4million fine included one customer being granted a deposit limit of £1,300 per month despite being an NHS worker earning £1,400 a month. In another instance, financial checks were only to be carried out on a customer displaying problem gambling patterns once a £40K deposit threshold had been met. In a third example, a customer only had 1 of his 11 accounts restricted due to source of funds (SOF) concerns.
The Rules are Not there to be Broken:
Money laundering failings included 888 UK Limited, who run 888 Casino, accepting a customer’s word of mouth in relation to employment income, allowing one customer to spend more than £65K in a 5-month period without requesting SOF and in one instance, they did not effectively implement their own policies where they stated customers have 10-days to produce SOF documents before accounts would be restricted. This led to a customer being able to lose £15K due to SOF not being requested until three weeks after that 10-day deadline had passed.
Andrew Rhodes, Gambling Commission Chief Executive, said: “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. 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.”
CEO of 888 Group, Itai Pazner, released a statement on March 1st accepting the ruling and penalty package from the UKGC but at the same time, he wanted to assure customers that all those failures date back to 2019 and a lot has changed since then. “Over recent years we have made significant investments in safer gambling, including more than doubling the size of our compliance team since 2019. We will continue to work closely with the UKGC, our peers and other stakeholders to drive continuous improvement in the industry.”
Changes include additional SOF checks and loss limits, the introduction of more technology to identify players at risk of harm and strengthening their own policies to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Pazner concluded with: “We continue to prioritise safer gambling by investing in technology as a force for good, giving customers transparency about their activity and using sophisticated AI to detect and block harmful play.”
Source: “£9.4m Fine for Online Operator 888”. Gambling Commission. March 1, 2022.
This post currently has no comments, be the first.
Leave a Comment