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Mr Green Receives A £3 Million Penalty Over Systematic Failings
By GP News Team Feb 27, 2020 IndustryUKGC Cracks the whip on Mr Green over regulatory misconducts in their online gambling platform, hitting them with a fine worth £3 millionWilliam Hill, the parent company of Mr Green, has been slapped with a £3 million fine after being found guilty of breaching the rules that prevent gambling harm and money laundering in the UK. The renowned gambling operator has become the ninth online gambling company to face the wrath of the UK Gambling Commission. So far, such regulatory breaches have led to the collection of over £20 million in penalties since 2018 by the Commission.
After William Hill acquired the MGR Group in January 2019, the Commission carried out a thorough compliance assessment of Mr Green, dating back to July 2018. The UK regulator examined customer accounts during the probe, and in that process, they found damning evidence of misconduct.
Systematic Failures that Led to the Fine
The Commission found out that the gambling operator failed to conduct social responsibility interaction with a troubled customer. The said customer is alleged to have won over £50,000, gambled it all away and then deposited thousands of more pounds again without being halted. According to UKGC policy, measures such as self-exclusion or revoking a user’s access to their account should be put in place to prevent players from carelessly and impulsively gambling away their money.
Another fault that the Commission found with Mr Green was when the gambling operator took 10-year-old evidence of a £176,000 insurance claim as satisfactory evidence of source of funds (SOF) from another customer. This customer had loaded a lifetime total of £1 million in deposits into their gaming account.
Still on the acceptable SOF matter, Mr Green accepted only a photograph of a laptop screen showing currency in the dollar on a claimed crypto trading account as sufficient SOF for another player.
On top of that, from November 2014 to November 2018, the regulator established that Mr Green did not have competent and sufficiently resourced AML (anti-money laundering) checks in place to address the risks posed by high-roller customers.
The settlement agreement consists of a £3m payment to the National Strategy Reduce Gambling Harms in the form of financial punishment. Other than the penalty, Mr Green will also cover the legal costs for the United Kingdom Gambling Commission, which summed up to £10,349.
The Crackdown Continues
Since the start of the Commission’s probe on gambling operators, a total of six operators have lost their licenses and are no longer allowed to offer gambling services to British customers.
Throughout the investigations of the nine high profile operating license misconducts, UKGC investigated the actions of 22 different PML (Personal Management License) holders. Out of all these 22, six gave up their licenses; six others walked away with a slap on the wrist, one was advised on conduct while two of them came out squeaky clean. However, for the seven that remain, investigations are still underway.
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