Watchdog whacks Spreadex with £1.36m fine over punter failings
Spreadex has been slapped with a £1.36m fine by the gambling watchdog after it found social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings.
The investigation by the Gambling Commission found that the sports and financial spread betting platform neglected to provide effective financial alerts, which would stop customers from losing a significant amount of money over a short period of time.
One customer was able to deposit £1.7m on Spreadex and lose £500,000 in just one month, whilst another paid out £365,000 and lost £284,000 within three months,.
For anti-money laundering failures, the commission revealed that one Spreadex punter had been met with a £25,000 financial deposit alert, but was allowed to increase the alert for further review to £100,000.
Spreadex will now pay the money to socially responsible causes as part of a settlement with the Gambling Commission.
Gambling Commission Director of Enforcement and Intelligence Leanne Oxley said: “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.”
Spreadex said in a statement: “Spreadex’s senior management team have been working closely with the Gambling Commission since the review took place and remain committed to providing our products and services in a fair and open way, which protects vulnerable people from harm and prevents gambling from being a source of crime or disorder.”
Just last week the regulator also whacked the betting shop giant Entain with a record £17m fine for its own “completely unacceptable” anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures.
The commission said the Ladbrokes and Coral owner repeatedly failed to protect problematic gamblers from betting huge sums in their shops and online casinos.
It said the firm let blocked customers open multiple accounts to avoid their bans as it repeatedly failed to escalate concerns around potentially problematic customers.
The news comes as the betting industry continues to brace itself for the gambling white paper.
The landmark review of the Gambling Act 2005 was initially expected in the Spring, but has been delayed on multiple occasions, with the recent political turbulence meaning it has been shelved until the Autumn at least.