Betfred settles with £3.25m with the UKGC

Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, the company trading as Betfred in the United Kingdom, has reached a £3.25m settlement with the Gambling Commission. The penalty is imposed in relation to what the regulator alleges are social responsibility and anti-money laundering shortcomings.

Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited is one of the most prominent operators in the United Kingdom and operates 1,750 betting shops, making the offense significant. According to the investigators, the failings cited in the penalty occurred between January 2021 and December 2022.

Commenting on the issuance of the latest fine and accompanying enforcement action, as well as the broader implications for the sector, Gambling Commission 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."

She noted that the settlement will go to socially responsible causes. The issues highlighted by the regulator include both social responsibility failures and AML failures. Concerning the first, the Gambling Commission alleged that there were insufficient controls in place to help protect players from overspending and risky spending.

Betfred made assumptions that customers were not at risk, the regulator said in its official statement. There was a failure to carry out safer gambling interactions for one customer who ended up spending £517,499 in a two-month time window. The company also did not maintain proper records which made it harder for Betfred to intervene and interact in future.

Anti-money laundering failures included once again insufficient record keeping and lack of conducting the appropriate know your customer and source of funds checks.

The company also worked with open-source information to arrive at conclusions about customers, which is also a violation the Gambling Commission argued. The sum of the settlement factors in the gravity of the offenses and the need for rectification of the committed breaches of regulatory standards. Betfred has greed to publications of the full details of the case.

This is one of the bigger settlements the Gambling Commission has secured over the past several months. In March, the regulator reached settlements with William Hill for the sum total of £19.2m and Kindred Group which settled with the regulator for £7.1m.

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