The UK’s gambling regulator has fined four of its online casino licensees a total of £4.5m for slack attention to anti-money laundering (AML), customer due diligence and social responsibility obligations.

On Wednesday, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) announced the latest results of its probe into the online casino sector. Four operators have either been financially penalized or agreed to make a payment in lieu of being fined, including InTouch Games Ltd (£2.2m), Betit Operations Ltd (£1.4m), MT Secure Trade (£700k) and BestBet (£231k.).

The UKGC began its probe of InTouch in April 2018, ultimately concluding that the operator’s AML risk assessment was far from robust, in part due to “a degree of complacency that it was a low-risk business.” InTouch’s own compliance officers expressed little faith in the company’s suspicious activity reports (SAR), and customer due diligence was largely limited to confirming a customer’s identity.

InTouch, which operates the mFortune, PocketWin and Mr Spin casino brands, took little interest in determining its customers’ source of funds. In one case, InTouch took no action after a customer’s spending increased from £200/month to £10k/month. Overall, InTouch was found to have set its financial triggers so high that it excluded most of its customers from reporting requirements.