William Hill to pay record £19.2 million fine

The fine has been distributed amongst the group’s three gambling businesses. WHG (International) Limited, which runs williamhill.com, will pay £12.5m, Mr Green Limited, which runs mrgreen.com, will pay £3.7m and William Hill Organization Limited, which operates 1,344 gambling premises across the UK, will pay £3m.

Andrew Rhodes, Gambling Commission chief executive, said: “When we launched this investigation the failings we uncovered were so widespread and alarming serious consideration was given to licence suspension.

“However, because the operator immediately recognised their failings and worked with us to swiftly implement improvements, we instead opted for the largest enforcement payment in our history.”

Social responsibility failures at William Hill businesses include:

• Failing to apply a 24-hour delay between receiving a request for an increase in a credit limit and granting it — one customer was allowed to immediately place a £100,000 bet when his credit limit had been set at £70,000.
• Failing to identify certain customers at risk of experiencing gambling related harm and failing to carry out checks at an early stage in the customer’s journey — one customer lost £14,902 in 70 minutes.
• One customer was allowed to open a new account and spend £23,000 in 20 minutes without any checks.
• Another customer was allowed to open a new account and spend £32,500 over two days without any checks.

AML failures include:

• Customers were able to stake large amounts of money without being monitored or scrutinised to a high enough standard — the operator failed to request Source of Funds (SoF) evidence when one customer staked £19,000 in a single bet, did not obtain documentation from a customer who staked £39,324 and lost £20,360 in 12 days, and did not obtain SoF evidence from a customer who staked £276,942 and lost £24,395 over two months.
• Policies, procedures and controls lacked guidance on appropriate action to take following the results of customer profiling and how its findings should be used to establish the appropriate outcome.
• Procedures and controls lacked hard stops to prevent further spend and mitigate against money laundering risks before customer risk profiling is completed.
• AML staff training provided insufficient information on risks and how to manage them.

All £19.2 million will be directed towards socially responsible purposes as part of a regulatory settlement.