The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has been extremely active in 2023 and definitely hasn’t been shy about handing out huge fines to operators that are in violation of anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility standards. Earlier this week the Commission handed out another big fine of £2 million ($2.5 million USD) to Videoslots for a laundry list of violations that range from not red flagging problem gamblers to not updating their policies.
Videoslots’ trouble with the UKGC relates to a period between October 2019 to February 2022. The regulatory breaches occurred across multiple sites run by the Malta-based company including videoslots.com, videoslots.co.uk and mrvegas.com.
UK AML rules are pretty stringent and states that, “Licensees must interact with customers in a way which minimises the risk of customers experiencing harms associated with gambling.” That’s a pretty heavy lift and running afoul of it isn’t tough to do, especially when companies don’t have strong discipline in their back offices.
For example, Videoslots allowed a player who earned £60,000 and £80,000 and savings of between £20,000 and £50,000 to spend £98,000 in just six months. That’s the kind of anomaly that the operator should spot before it happens. It’s also the kind of thing that the UKGC tends to uncover during its investigations.
This is the second big fine in recent memory that’s been handed out to Videoslots for AML and social responsibility failings. The company was hit with a £1 million fine ($1.27 million USD) back in 2019 for similar issues.
UK-facing operators should read the Commission’s complaint against Videoslots and take it seriously. The UKGC is not playing around and they’re definitely not afraid of handing out huge fines to operators that can’t get their acts together.