NEWS
25 January 2023
Gambling Commission hands down £6.1m fine to Intouch Games
By Matthew Nicholson

The operator – which runs 11 websites, including bonusboss.co.uk, cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com and slotfactory.com – failed a gambling compliance assessment last march, triggering an investigation.

Some of Intouch’s social responsibility failures found by the Commission were ‘not interacting with a customer until seven weeks after they had been flagged for interaction for erratic play patterns and extended periods of play.

‘And accepting a customer’s word that they earned £6,000 a month without verifying this information after the customer account was flagged due to customer spending and gambling during unsociable hours.’

Meanwhile, its AML failings included ‘not adequately taking account of the risk of a customer being a beneficiary of a life insurance policy; having links to high-risk jurisdictions; or being a politically exposed person (“PEP”), family member of a PEP or known close associates of a PEP, within its money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment.

‘Not having policies, procedures and controls in place to address risk factors found by the investigation.’

Kay Roberts, Executive Director of Operations, 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.”

This is the third fine handed down to Intouch Games after it was found guilty of breaching regulations in 2019 and 2021.