In Touch Games (ITG), a leading operator, aggregator and platform provider in the mobile gaming industry, has to pay a fine of £6.1m to the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for breaching anti-money laundering laws and a lack of social responsibility.
UKGC’s lawsuit:
Today, Florida-based company, In Touch, which offers the latest, innovative technology iGaming solutions, has been fined £6.1 million by the UK regulator, the third fine for a UK-licensed operator in the last 4 years.
Previous penalties were in 2019 (£2.2 million for breaching regulations) and a warning and £3.4 million fine in 2021.
Furthermore, the UK regulator has issued a third fine since the start this year, which means the regulator is constantly cracking down on all forms of illegal gambling in the UK.
Investigating certain irregularities on 11 company websites such as bonusboss.co.uk, cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com and slotfactory.com, the UK Gambling Commission asserted that in terms of failures in fight against money laundering, the operator is responsible for:
- not adequately taking account of the risk of a customer being a beneficiary of a life insurance policy ; having links to high-risk jurisdictions; or being a politically exposed person (“PEP”), family member of a PEP or known close associates of a PEP, within its money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment;
- not having policies, procedures and controls in place to address the risk factors mentioned above;
- not sufficiently considering the Commission’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment or the Commission’s guidance;
- not ensuring its policies, procedures and controls were implemented effectively, for example not following its own policy to request source of funds information from customers who had deposited and lost £10,000 in a 12-month period.
However, that’s not all; as there are also failures of social responsibility such as:
- not interacting with a customer until seven weeks after they had been flagged for interaction for erratic play patterns and extended periods of play;
- accepting a customer’s word that they earned £6,000 a month without verifying this information after the customer account was flagged due to customer spend and gambling during unsociable hours.
No visible improvement:
Commenting on the fine, Kay Roberts, Executive Director of Operations, said: “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 £6.1 million fine shows that we will take escalating enforcement action where failures are repeated and all licensees should be acutely aware of this.”
