Done Bros., trading as Betfred, have been hit with a massive £3.25 million ($4.26 million USD) fine by the Great Britain Gambling Commission (GBGC) for a variety of social and anti-money laundering (AML) violations. It’s the latest example of how England’s gaming regulators are holding operators to a very high standard, and imposing severe penalties on those who step out of line.
The social and AML violations associated with this latest fine occurred during a period covering January 2021 and December 2022. Betfred was hit with a £2.9 million ($3.8 million USD) fine in September of 2022 for similar social and AML failings.
This latest round of violations by Betfred are a laundry list of lax control procedures within Betfred. For example, the Commission points to Betfred employees taking a casual attitude towards problem gambling patterns if the player was winning regularly. While this may pass the sniff test to the gaming layman, industry veterans certainly know that no player is going to win forever.
On the AML side, Betfred employees were found to have been lax in their record-keeping and their processes for identifying the source of player funds. Commissioners also found the Betfred had set the thresholds for problem gambling alerts higher than is expected.
The list of social and AML failings on Betfred’s latest run-in with the GBGC goes on at some length in its descriptions of Betfred’s many failings.
Commenting on the matter on the GBGC website the Commission’s executive director of operations, Kay Roberts, said, “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.”
“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,” she added.