Online Operator In Touch Games Fined £6.1m
An examination by the Gambling Commission found social responsibility and money laundering shortcomings at a gambling operation, which will now pay a £6.1 million fine.
A compliance evaluation conducted by In Touch Games, which manages 11 websites, including bonusboss.co.uk, cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com, and slotfactory.com, was unsuccessful in March.
Failures in social responsibility include:
Waiting seven weeks to interact with a consumer who had been identified for interaction due to unpredictable play patterns and prolonged play times.
Accepting a customer's claim that they make £6,000 per month without checking it out after the customer account was flagged for excessive spending and late-night gambling.
Failures in preventing money laundering included:
not adequately incorporating into its money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment the risk that a customer is a beneficiary of a life insurance policy, has connections to high-risk jurisdictions, or is a politically exposed person ("PEP"), family member of a PEP, or is known to be in close proximity to a PEP.
Lack of policies, practises, and controls to address the risk factors listed above
not fully taking into account the Commission's recommendations or risk assessment for money laundering and terrorist financing
not following its own policy to ask customers who had deposited and lost £10,000 in a 12-month period for source of money information, for example, not making sure its policies, processes, and controls were applied correctly.
The third time ITG has been subject to regulatory action, it paid a £2.2 million settlement for regulatory violations in 2019 and received a £3.4 million fine and warning in 2021 for additional violations.
Executive Director of Operations Kay Roberts stated: “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.”
