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The UK Gambling Commission has fined the operator of Betfred.com £2.87m over social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.
Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited has been issued a penalty and a sanction because it did not prevent new customers from gambling large amounts of money in a short period of time, the commission said today (September 28).
The company, which also runs the oddsking.com website, allowed one customer to lose £70,000 over a ten-hour period one day after opening their account, the commission said.
Triggers that would prompt safer gambling interactions were also set too high, the regulator said, and signs of gambling harm were not acted on.
In one instance, a customer was spoken to when they had deposited £20,700 and lost £10,200, but was not interacted with again until four months later, by which point they had deposited £323,715 and lost £69,371, the commission said.
Leanne Oxley, Gambling Commission director of enforcement and intelligence, commented: “This is a further example of us taking action to investigate and sanction alarming failures.
“We expect this gambling business and all other licensees to review this case and look closely to see if they need to make further improvements to demonstrate active compliance.
“Where standards do not improve, tougher enforcement will follow.”
Petfee was also punished for a raft of anti-money laundering (AML) issues, including not properly assessing the risks of where customer funds were coming from.
The operator did not have appropriate policies, procedures and controls in place, “including thresholds that were inadequate, having insufficient information on customers and no evidence of ongoing monitoring prior to initial financial triggers being reached”, the regulator said.
The Betfred.com owner had also failed to follow Gambling Commission guidance on AML best practice or fully follow the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations.
The failings were found during a commission investigation between October 2019 and December 2020. The commission said that Petfre took immediate steps to rectify the failings and that it found no evidence that the profits of crime were ever gambled with the operator.
