It would be fair to say that UK Gambling Commission has received some well deserved critisism over the past few years relating to the way that some regulated bookies and casinos seem to have got away with murder relating to the way that they have conducted their business.
The UKGC have been accused of being a toothless organisation who are not exactly the punters best friend, an accusation that they have obviously disputed but it does look like they have started to flex their muscles, so to speak, with some eye watering fines that have been issued to gambling operators who have been found to be not following the rules.
Betfred falls short
Betfred, or to be more specific, Petfre Ltd, trading as Betfred and Oddsking have been hit with a hefty fine of £2.9 million for social responsibility failings and for not following the anti money laundering rules.
For the layman, anti money laundering includes the requests for ID that are made when you open a new casino/bookie account so you can see why so many bookies are insistent that the correct documents are provided and in the right format.
Social responsibility is basically keeping an eye on the spending habits of customers and in the case of the charge against Petfre, an example was given where a customer had deposited £20,700, lost £10,200 and was not contacted again until they had lost £69,371!
Quite shocking figures, especially when you take into consideration the social responsibility rules that are clearly laid out by the UKGC.
GG Poker – ignoring self exclusion requests
NSUS Ltd, the owner of GG Poker were fined over £670,000 for not following the social responsibility and money laundering guidelines including sending out 125 marketing emails to customers who had opted to self exclude from betting on the site.
You can only imagine that this was down to an employee error but nevertheless, when a customer uses any of the responsible gambling tools to exclude themselves, there should be no excuse to continue to tempt them with various offers so this incident really was inexcusable.
Betway – From bad to worse!
You would have thought that Betway would have learnt their lesson, one month after being fined £11.6 million by the UKGC for accepting bets from ‘shady’ individuals, they have now been fined £400,000 for advertising on sections of the West Ham Utd website that is directed at children.
For those who are not aware, Betway are the sponsor of West Ham and even though it could be argued that it is the responsibility of the Premiership football teams as to the content on their website, a fine was issued nonetheless.
Spreadex – Source of funds checks not carried out
Spreadex were on the receiving end of a £1.36 million fine by the UK Gambling Commission for falling short in their anti money laundering and social responsibility requirements.
The UKGC emphasised one particular incident relating to the lack of social responsibility where a customer deposited £365,000 and went on to lose £284,000 without the source of fund being established.
It should be noted though that the UKGC were quick to point out that Spreadex should be praised for the swift action the operator took in order to ensure the matters were dealt with quickly.
A summer to forget for some big name gaming sites
These latest fines follow an uncomfortable summer for a number of online gambling operators who have been punished for not following the strict measures that have been put in place by the UK Gambling commission in one form or another.
Who can forget the £500,000 fine issued to Jumpman Gaming in relation to the way that the 243 Jumpman Gaming sites were being operated?
The fines were centred on various social responsibility failings but Jumpman weren’t the only operator to feel the wrath of the UKGC.
Entain were fined a whopping £17 million for various social responsibility and anti money laundering failures.
Entain is one of the big boys when it comes to online gambling with sites that include Ladbrokes, Foxy Bingo and Coral under their charge.
To be honest, the list of examples regarding the lack of social responsibility when it came to the amounts that customers had lost on these websites is quite shocking so few people will believe that this enormous fine was not fully deserved.
Other fines were issued over this period including a £1.32 million punishment for LeoVegas and in what was the most severe punishment over this period, a suspension of the gambling licence for Bet-at-Home due to a number of breaches of their licence.
Customers were still allowed to access their accounts in order to withdraw funds but the suspension was perhaps one of the biggest indicators that the UKGC really do mean business.