10bet to pay £620,000 settlement to UKGC over AML and social responsibility failings
Operator found to have allowed customers to gamble “significant amounts of money over short periods of time” before interactions or interventions
Blue Star Planet, which trades as 10bet in the UK, has agreed to pay a £620,000 settlement after the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) found the operator had failed to adhere to social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.
Following a regulatory review, 10bet was discovered to have failings in its AML processes, deficiencies across its responsible gambling procedures and weaknesses in its reporting arrangements.
The UKGC established that 10bet’s AML risk assessment was inadequate in certain areas, including automatic deposit limits being too high and no measures being put in place to control deposit limits when AML risk alerts were signalled.
The regulator also found that some customers were allowed to deposit significant sums of money in a short period of time before any satisfactory risk profiling or restrictions could be put in place.
Additionally, 10bet allowed customers to gamble at high velocity before automated restrictions kicked in and the operator failed to gain source of funds evidence that should have been requested at an earlier stage of the customer journey.
The UKGC also found that between November 2019 and June 2021, 10bet failed to comply with several clauses in relation to its licence conditions and codes of practice, as well as the social responsibility code provision.
These included failing to have the required link to the UKGC’s webpage embedded on the site, a statement that the firm was licensed by the UKGC and its UKGC account number.
It was also found that the operator failed to employ a dedicated team of compliance staff to monitor safer gambling alerts and conduct monitoring overnight, which led to customers surpassing their spending thresholds.
The regulator added that during its assessment of 10bet, two customers who were showing signs of problem gambling were not interacted with in a timely manner by the operator.
The £620,000 payment in lieu of a financial penalty will be given to socially responsible causes, while 10bet will also pay £3,571.25 towards the UKGC’s costs of covering the case.
The UKGC noted that 10bet had recognised its failings early on, acted quickly to remedy the situation and cooperated throughout its investigation.
This is the UKGC’s fourth regulatory action of the year so far, following the £442,000 fine issued to TonyBet and the £337,000 regulatory settlement agreed by Vivaro Gaming.
Intouch Games was slapped with a £6.1m fine in the most significant action taken by the regulator in 2023.