Casumo slapped with another UKGC Fine – £6 Million Sterling!

‘Casumo slapped with another UKGC Fine – £6 Million Sterling!’ (Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/palace-london-parliament-big-ben-530055/)

Now a “serial offender”, Casumo received UKGC fine – this time £6 million for failing to live up to UKGC Anti-Money Laundering and Responsible Gaming statutes.

The casino previously received fines of just under £6 million in November 2018. Following on from its previous fines, via fresh reviews of the casino, investigators found a slew of issues that covered a time from October 2019 through January 2020. Casumo also agreed to be part of continuing audits and compliance monitoring as part of the settlement reached with regulators.

There are two main failings cited by UKGC commissioner Watson were in Social Responsibility and Anti -Laundering programs. The Responsible Gaming enforcement was particularly lax as examples were given of a player who lost over a million pounds over three years without ever being approached or flagged by Casumo’s problem gambling staff. Other instances of lack of oversight were a player losing almost £60,000 in an hour and a half, and another of a punter losing almost £90,000 in 5 hours of play.

UKGC clearly states that there should be some kind of customer interaction with players of this type, but it didn’t happen.

Other examples included a loss by an individual of £65,000 in a month and another who managed to lose £75,000 over 7 months, also without intervention. These were similar complaints to those brought against Casumo back in 2018!

Anti-Money Laundering

Their Anti-Money Laundering programs had some equally egregious oversights. The UKGC had made it quite clear in their findings in 2018 that Casumo was not following the ‘Source Of Funds’ protocol on deposits. But apparently, they chose to double down on not properly vetting customers or the source of their money.

Examples here ranged from not checking players pay stubs or bank accounts to get an adequate idea of what their deposit range might be or what loss limit might trigger customer interaction.

In fact, the casino didn’t put in place any assessment of what a customer should be allowed to risk based on any factor like pay scale or wealth at all!

They chose not to worry about verifying the source of funds if the deposits came from another casino operator. They failed to verify the authenticity of the required documents. They also were found to be slipshod in ID verification as well. Altogether a rather dismal effort, and almost certainly the reason for the 7-figure fine. These were historical findings, though.

The investigation concluded more than a year ago and Casumo brought in a new CEO in January 2020 after being apprised of some of the UKGC findings at the time!

CEO Promises Change!

CEO Shelly Suter Hadad promised a new age of compliance and strict oversight. And this was largely backed up by an additional assessment done in June of last year which found a radical switch in the company’s ‘AML and Responsible’ gaming programs.

Reacting to today’s news she promised a new executive team was in a place that will focus on making sure that fundamental change takes place at the company, and that strict adherence to the rules and laws set out by UKGC will be at the very core of Casumo going forward!