888 hit with £9.4m UKGC fine for AML and social responsibility breaches

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has slapped 888 with a £9.4m fine – one of the largest to date – over social responsibility and money laundering failures.

888 UK Ltd, which operates 78 websites including 888.com, was also issued with an official warning from the regulator and will “undergo extensive independent auditing”.

Following a review of 888’s operating licence, the UKGC discovered several “social responsibility failings”, including not conducting financial checks until a customer deposited £40,000 and failing to interact with a customer who lost £37,000 in a six-week period during the pandemic.

According to the UKGC, 888 allowed an NHS worker earning £1,400 per month to set a monthly deposit limit of £1,300, while there was a lack of evidence that the firm proactively placed restrictions on accounts where such concerns were raised.

The UKGC said most of the interactions with players predominately consisted of “an email just detailing responsible gambling tools and did not require a customer response”.

On the AML front, the UKGC found that 888 allowed one user to spend £65,835 in five months without doing source of funds (SoF) checks.

It was reported that 888 accepted verbal assurances from customers regarding work income and relying on open-source data to authenticate SoF. 888 also didn’t set out which documents should be requested as part of SoF checks.

Furthermore, one customer’s SoF were not requested until three weeks after the 10-day trigger to present documentation and the individual lost £15,000 during that period.

This is not the first time 888 has faced action by the UKGC; the operator paid a £7.8m penalty in 2017 for failing vulnerable customers.

The chief executive of the UKGC, Andrew Rhodes, said: “The circumstances of the last enforcement action may be different but both cases involve failing consumers – and this is something that is not acceptable.”

“Today’s fine is one of our largest to date, and all should be clear that if there is a repeat of the failures at 888, then we have to seriously consider the suitability of the operator to uphold the licensing objectives and keep gambling safe and crime-free.

“Consumers in Britain deserve to know that when they gamble, they are participating in a leisure activity where operators play their part in keeping them safe and are carrying out checks to ensure money is crime-free.”

In response to the fine, 888 issued a statement accepting the UKGC’s report and said it has taken “immediate and appropriate action to improve its internal policies and procedures so as to ensure full compliance with its UK licensing obligations”.

These procedures include implementing additional customer SoF checks and loss limits, investing more in its safer gambling and compliance team, including further employee training and strengthening and developing its assessment of AML risks facing the operator.

CEO Itai Pazner commented: “We recognise our responsibility to make gambling safer and regret that previous implementation of our processes failed to meet required standards in the UK.

“We accept the findings of the UKGC’s investigation of some of 888’s former policies and procedures and have taken immediate appropriate action to improve and address the failings.”

Following today’s news, 888’s share price was down 6.44% at the time of writing to £227 on the London Stock Exchange.