Betfred forced to settle on AML failings

Betfred’s operator has reached a £3.25m settlement for multiple anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility failures following an investigation by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC).

These repeated licence breaches occurred between January 2021 and December 2022 across some of the operator’s 1,750 betting shops throughout the United Kingdom.

Social responsibility infringements

Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, under the trading name of Betfred, was found liable by the UK regulator for failing to protect new players, monitor high-velocity spending or play duration.

Furthermore, Betfred failed to produce evidence of any effectiveness when the operator did carry out individual customer interactions and even lacked adequate recordkeeping that would have served to make any future interactions in some way effective.

AML failings

Aside from its poor recordkeeping, Betfred was also found to have set its financial alert threshold too high.

To compound this, the operator failed to consistently collect know-your-customer (KYC) identification and even obtain the source of funds documentation from its players.

What’s more, Betfred relied excessively on open-source information and did not take any further steps to verify its customers’ source of funds.

Betfred’s response

Betfred initially responded by explaining that safer gambling interactions were forgone on a customer who staked £517,499 as the operator was unaware that winning players were at risk of harm.

Although no evidence of criminal spending was uncovered in the selected customer records during the investigation, Betfred admitted to breaching its licence conditions.

Due to this, the settlement was easily reached, with the fee heavily increased by the fact that the senior management should have been aware of the governance issues that led to the breaches.

Nonetheless, Betfred has since implemented an early action plan to remedy the issues they have been caught out for, already meeting the UKGC’s timetable of providing material and responses.

The UKGC

In lieu of this latest investigation, the Gambling Commission has emphasised the need to raise industry-wide standards, highlighting the requirement to enact effective safeguards to prevent both gambling harm and criminal activity.

Kay Roberts, the UKGC’s executive director of operations expressed the commission’s stance to secure and support the gambling industry:

“In recent years there’s been a public focus on online gambling but this case illustrates how important it is for us to continue our drive to raise standards across the whole industry.”

She also added: “Gambling is a legitimate leisure activity enjoyed safely by millions but it is vital that every single operator — either online or offline — has in place effective safeguards to prevent harm or crime,”

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