Online gambling company 888 fined £9.4m

Online gaming company 888 has been fined £9.4million for social responsibility and money laundering offences.

The Gambling Commission said 888 UK Limited, which operates 78 websites including 888.com, had also received an official warning and would undergo a thorough independent audit.

The fine – one of the largest imposed by the regulator to date – is the second enforcement action for the 888 Group. In 2017 they paid a £7.8m fine for vulnerable customers defaulters.

The commission said 888 failed to identify risky gamblers effectively because their policies only required financial checks after a customer had deposited £40,000.

The operator also failed to contact a customer who lost £37,000 in six weeks during the pandemic and gave another customer he knew was an NHS worker earning £1,400 a month a deposit cap £1,300 monthly.

Money laundering failures included allowing customers to deposit £40,000 before carrying out source of funds (SOF) verifications and accepting verbal assurances from customers as to their income.

A customer was allowed to spend £65,835 in just five months without an SOF cheque.

Gambling Commission chief executive Andrew Rhodes said: “The circumstances of the latest enforcement action may be different, but both cases involve defaulting consumers – and that is something that is not acceptable.

“Today’s fine is one of our largest to date, and it should be clear that if there is a repeat failure at 888, we need to seriously consider the ability of the operator to meet licensing objectives and ensure game safety and crime free.

“UK consumers deserve to know that when they gamble they are participating in a leisure activity where operators play their part to keep them safe and carry out checks to ensure the money is crime free.”