InTouch Games makes £2.2m donation to gambling charity

InTouch Games Limited (ITG) has made a £2.2m donation to a gambling harm related charity as part of a regulatory settlement with the Gambling Commission.

InTouch was found to have inappropriate anti-money laundering processes in place and poor social responsibility controls.

One particular instance involved ITG failing to interact with a VIP player who raised their spend from £200 to £10,000 per month. The company failed to check that the player could afford the increased spend by requesting appropriate source of funds information.

The company's enhanced due diligence financial trigger was set too high for the business model, therefore in many cases, InTouch Games didn’t have adequate information about its highest depositing players.

Other operators that have either been financially penalised or agreed to make a payment in lieu of being fined include Betit Operations Limited (£1.4m), MT Secure Trade (£700,000) and BestBet Limited (£230,972).

Betit Operations, operator of Kaboo and Highroller Casino, didn’t have a formal money laundering and terrorist financing (MLTF) risk assessment in place. The GC also noted that Betit only conducted basic checks on its players and it’s approach to Customer Due Diligence (CDD) was inadequate. 

Betit’s penalties also include it’s failings to interact with high depositing players, with one customer depositing £110,000 in 24 hours. The team didn't contact the player and instead, rewarded them with VIP status and an increased deposit limit. 

MT SecureTrade, operator of Guts and Rizk, accepted £134,350 of deposits from one player in five months and allowed them to withdraw over £60,000 without requesting further information such as source of funds. 

The player had shown signs of problem gambling such as cancelled withdrawals, increased deposit limits and deposits made with five different credit cards.

The Gambling Commission revealed that the payments were part of its investigation of more than 120 online casino operators over the past 18 months. Of those, 45 were told to submit a plan to raise standards, 38 showed signs of improvement and five handed in their licences.

Richard Watson, Gambling Commission Executive Director, said: “We have been working hard to raise standards in the online industry to ensure that gambling is crime-free and that the one in five people in Britain who gamble online every month can do so safely.

“But our work will not stop here. As a regulator, we will continue to set and enforce standards that the industry must comply with to protect consumers.

“We expect operators to know their customers and to ask the right questions to make sure they meet their anti-money laundering and social responsibility obligations.”