The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has fined sports betting operator Betfred £3.3m ($4.3m) for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures. It’s actually not the first time the company has had to pay for faults in the UK space, forking out £2.9m ($3.8m) in 2022 for similar mistakes.
insufficient controls to protect new customers
This time around, Done Bros, the company trading as Betfred in the UK market, has a long list of errors. The list, published on the UKGC website on Tuesday, includes having insufficient controls to protect new customers and making assumptions that customers were not at risk of harm because they were winning.
As part of this latter error, the UKGC notes one specific incident in which Betfred failed to carry out safer gambling interactions with a gambler who staked £517,499 ($676,860) in just two months.
Among its anti-money laundering failures, Betfred failed to keep proper records and set financial alerts too high. The operator – which runs 1,750 betting shops in the UK – also placed an undue reliance on open-source information.
Kay Roberts, Executive Director of Operations for the UKGC, commented on the failings that occurred between January 2021 and December 2022. She said: “This case illustrates how important it is for us to continue our drive to raise standards across the whole industry.”