Gambling company In Touch Games fined £6.1m for ‘social responsibility and money laundering failings’ | Business News

Gambling firm In Touch Games has been fined millions by a regulator for “social responsibility and money laundering failings”.

The Gambling Commission said the company, which operates a number of online sites including bonusboss.co.uk, had been slapped with a £6.1m penalty – its third fine related to oversight failures.

The issues at In Touch Games, the watchdog said, included not having appropriate policies, procedures and controls in place and not sufficiently considering or implementing the regulator’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment or guidance.

It also accused the firm of not acting in customers’ best interests.

The commission cited an example, saying In Touch had not interacted with a customer until seven weeks after they had been flagged for erratic and extended play.

It said a customer’s word that they earned £6,000 a month had been accepted without verification until they were flagged for gambling during unsociable hours.

It is the third time the company, whose brands also include cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com and slotfactory.com, has been penalised.

In 2019 it paid a £2.2m settlement for failures and in 2021 it received a £3.4m fine and warning for further failures.

Kay Roberts, executive director of operations at the Gambling Commission, said: “Considering this operator’s history of failings we expected to see significant improvement when we carried out our planned compliance assessment.

“Disappointingly, although many improvements had been made, there was still more to do.

“This £6.1m fine shows that we will take escalating enforcement action where failures are repeated and all licensees should be acutely aware of this.”