Betting firm 888 fined £9.4m after customers lost thousands in pandemic
Online casino company 888 will pay a £9.4m fine, the third highest in the history of British gambling regulation, over multiple failings that led to customers racking up huge losses during the depths of the Covid pandemic.
The Gambling Commission highlighted a series of transgressions that it warned could force it to consider 888’s suitability to hold a licence to operate in Great Britain.
The fine comes just weeks before the government is due to publish proposals to reform gambling regulation, potentially including affordability checks to make sure people can afford the amounts they are betting.
The regulator said 888 was not properly identifying customers who were at risk of harm because it did not carry out financial checks until they had deposited £40,000.
In one case, the company did no checks on a customer until they had lost £37,000 in just six weeks during 2020, a time when the commission had asked companies to be cautious about luring in people who might be more vulnerable due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In another case, 888 placed a deposit cap of £1,300 a month on the account of an NHS worker whom it knew earned £1,400 a month.
An audit carried out in October 2020 found that most of the company’s social responsibility interactions with customers consisted of a single email describing the available responsible gambling tools and did not involve customer interaction.
Andrew Rhodes, the chief executive of the Gambling Commission, pointed out that this was 888’s second big fine, after it was hit with a £7.8m penalty in 2017, a record at the time.
“The circumstances of the last enforcement action may be different but both cases involve failing consumers – and this is something that is not acceptable,” said Rhodes.
“Today’s
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