An online gaming firm has been fined £6.1 million by the UK Gambling Commission for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures - its third fine in less than four years.
Intouch Games was hit with the hefty fine following an investigation by the Government's industry regulator which highlighted multiple failings by the Birmingham-based business.
The company, which operates 11 websites including Bonus Boss, Jammy Monkey and Slot Factory, had previously failed a scheduled compliance assessment.
The Gambling Commission said the social responsibility failures included not interacting with a customer until seven weeks after they had been flagged for interaction due to erratic patterns and extended periods of play.
It also said Intouch Games had accepted a customer's word that they earned £6,000 a month without verifying this information after the customer's account was flagged due to spending volumes and gambling during unsociable hours.
The anti-money laundering failures included not adequately taking into account the risk of a customer being a beneficiary of a life insurance policy nor having links to high-risk jurisdictions.
The commission also said the company had not adequately taken into account the risk of a customer being a politically exposed person, a family member of a politically exposed person or a known close associate of a politically exposed person within its risk assessments.
Another failure concerned not ensuring policies, procedures and controls were implemented effectively - for example, not following its own policy to request information about funds from customers who had deposited and lost £10,000 in a 12-month period.
This latest fine follows a penalty of £2.2 million in 2019 for regulatory failures and £3.4 million and a warning in 2021 for further failures, meaning it has paid out £11.7 million to the regulator.
Kay Roberts, executive director of operations at the Gambling Commission, 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 latest scandal to hit the company, which was founded in 2001 as a slot machine and jukebox manufacturer, after it closed its previous base in Halesowen and relocated to Birmingham city centre in November.
At the time, around 50 members of staff were told they were being made redundant.
It was bought out last summer by another online gaming group, Skywind, which said the redundancies followed a review of the business, resulting in changes to its customer service team.
Intouch Games had not responded to a request for comment about this latest fine at the time of publication.
