In the United Kingdom and the Gambling Commission regulator has announced that iGaming operator SpreadEx Limited is to pay a fine of £1.36 million ($1.61 million) for numerous social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

The watchdog used an official press release to detail that its investigations determined that the firm behind the online sportsbetting and financial spread-betting domain at SpreadEx.com had allowed punters to lose large amounts of cash in shorts periods of time without receiving any kind of alarm. The organization stated that the United Kingdom-licensed operator had also not been ‘sufficiently recording and evaluating its customer interactions’ and placed an overreliance on automated alerts ‘to identify customers at potential risk of experiencing harms.’

Insufficient interface:

In publicizing the penalty and the Gambling Commission revealed that SpreadEx Limited had permitted one aficionado to deposit £1.7 million ($2 million) and then lose £500,000 ($590,800) over the course of a single month without conducting a sufficient interaction evaluation. The regulator went on to proclaim that the operator was additionally taken to task for not ‘considering the effectiveness of restricting the account.’

Financial fount:

Leanne Oxley serves as the Enforcement and Intelligence Director for the Gambling Commission and she used the press release to disclose that SpreadEx Limited was additionally sanctioned for a series of anti-money laundering failures that included one instance in which a patron was allowed to deposit £365,000 ($430,800) and then lose £284,000 ($335,200) after just three months without having to establish the source of this cash. The watchdog pronounced that the operator had similarly permitted a punter ‘to continue depositing after providing redacted bank statements’ following a source-of-funds request while having increased another’s initial £25,000 ($29,500) limit to £100,000 ($118,000) ‘based on a self-declaration of income and an open-source check.’

Read a statement from Oxley…

“Whilst it is disappointing to see anti-money laundering and social responsibility breaches occur despite our extensive published cases highlighting similar failures, we note the swift and robust action the licensee took to bring itself back to compliance. We expect similar commitment and engagement across the gambling sector.”

Serious series:

The Gambling Commission’s action concerning SpreadEx Limited comes a little over a week after it imposed a record-setting £17 million ($20.4 million) penalty against the LC International and Ladbrokes Betting and Gaming arms of iGaming giant Entain for an analogous series of social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures. This sanction followed the levying of a £630,000 ($764,000) fine for the online sportsbetting exchange at Smarkets.com with the regulator asserting that SpreadEx Limited is to now donate its punishment ‘to socially responsible causes as part of a settlement.’