Betfred gets whacked with hefty fine by UKGC for money laundering and other failures

[The Buzz]

Petfre Limited, the parent company of Betfred and Oddsking.com, has been fined £2.8 million by the UK Gambling Commission for a number of social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

One of those "failures" included not having and controls in place to prevent "large levels of high velocity spend by new customers" which resulted in one player losing £70,000 over a 10-hour period just a day after opening the account.

Other "failures" detailed in the UKGC press release included:

Social responsibility failures included:

- Setting safer gambling interaction triggers too high and when customers’ spend increased considerably, which can be an indicator of harm, no further safer gambling account review was conducted in a timely manner– one customer was first interacted with when they had deposited £20,700 and lost £10,200 but then the next interaction did not occur until four months later when the customer had deposited £323,715 and lost £69,371.

Anti-money laundering failures included:
- Not fully taking into account the money laundering and terrorist financing (MLTF) risks connected to its business, in particular risks connected to country or geographic area, customers, transactions, and product and services

- Not having appropriate policies, procedures and controls in place to manage and mitigate the MLTF risks, including thresholds that were inadequate, having insufficient information on customers and no evidence of ongoing monitoring prior to initial financial triggers being reached.

- Not ensuring that its policies, procedures and controls were implemented effectively, including not following guidance issued by the Commission and not taking into account any applicable learning or guidelines published by the Commission

- Failing to thoroughly implement the measures described in the Money Laundering Regulations, including failing to identify the MLTF risks to which the business was subject and failing to establish and maintain policies, procedures and controls to manage and mitigate the risks effectively.

- The operator also provided inadequate employee training, failed to scrutinise transactions to ensure that that they were consistent with their knowledge of the customer and their risk profile, and failed to conduct sufficient anti-money laundering, customer due diligence and source of funds checks.

Read more here: https://www.gpwa.org/article/betfred...by-ukgc-245394

[CiaranMc]

when is ukgc going to do something meaningful? seems like these fines are 15 minutes' work. #meaningless
pretty depressing,

[casionmark]

£70k is ludicrous by anyones standards. I thought there was a £2k threshold affordability check by default these days? Must have passed at that stage and just been left to carry on depositing.

[wonderpunter]

Waiting for the press release of a uk pullout soon...

[ocreditor]

Well, that's what happens when you lose your brakes..

[TheGooner]

Waiting for the press release of a uk pullout soon...

Betfred can't pull out of the UK - it's pretty much their only market now.

[tufty]

Betfred can't pull out of the UK - it's pretty much their only market now.

Yes, they will never pull out of the UK. They are rooted in the UK market. They have circa 1500 betting shops apart from the online, telephone betting etc. They will be the last firm standing in the UK, however wrecked the environment gets.

[Pokerface]

Will be interesting to follow how they manage to answer to the £70,000 over a 10-hour period loss for a player. Where are the controls?

[AussieDave]

Will be interesting to follow how they manage to answer to the £70,000 over a 10-hour period loss for a player. Where are the controls?

Someone forgot to feed the monkeys their bananas

[Grand_RexAffiliates]

Well this is a very good example of why people need to do their due diligence before they start any kind of operations