QuinnBet Agrees to £609,104 Settlement Over AML and Safer-Gambling Failures

Online bookmaker QuinnBet (Gibraltar) Limited has agreed to pay a £609,104 ($830,501) regulatory settlement following an investigation by the UK Gambling Commission that uncovered significant weaknesses in its anti-money laundering and safer-gambling controls.

The agreement, announced on Thursday, brings to a close an extensive compliance review of QuinnBet’s remote gambling licence covering the period from March 2023 to August 2025. The settlement includes a £193,118 disgorgement payment, as well as contributions towards the regulator’s investigation costs.

Because the matter was resolved through a regulatory settlement agreed by both parties, all of the funds will be paid into the UK government’s Consolidated Fund. Money held in the Consolidated Fund is generally used for public expenditure, including the day-to-day delivery of public services, government departmental operations and servicing the national debt.

Anti-money laundering shortcomings

The Gambling Commission identified a number of shortcomings in QuinnBet’s anti-money laundering procedures, concluding that the operator had “insufficient controls to act in a timely manner to identify and mitigate the risk posed by customers who were displaying disproportionate spend”.

In one case highlighted by the regulator, a customer whose monthly payslips showed earnings of around £2,000 deposited and lost £9,000 in just four days.

Another customer deposited approximately £120,000 and withdrew £111,000 in a period of less than three months. QuinnBet failed to adequately verify the source of the money involved.

The investigation also identified delays in the submission of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). In addition, problems during a platform migration resulted in 194 customers unintentionally being allowed to exceed their deposit limits.

As a result, QuinnBet breached Licence Condition 12.1.1, which requires gambling operators to maintain effective policies and procedures to prevent money laundering. The operator was also found to have breached Social Responsibility Code Provisions (SRCP) 3.4.3 and 3.4.4, relating to the timely identification, assessment and response to customer behaviour that may indicate gambling-related harm.

Safer-gambling controls also found wanting

The Commission also raised concerns about QuinnBet’s approach to identifying and reducing gambling harm, finding that the company relied too heavily on manual interventions and that its alert systems were not sufficiently responsive.

One particularly notable example involved a customer who placed around 4,800 bets in a single day, followed by approximately 7,000 bets the following day, without generating any internal warning or alert.

In another instance, a customer staked more than £215,000 in one day after receiving a substantial win. The activity was not identified until the operator's morning report on the following day.

The regulator further identified weaknesses in QuinnBet’s arrangements for younger customers aged between 18 and 24. Lower deposit limits for this group were applied through a manual system, which on occasion allowed customers to exceed their restrictions for extended periods. One younger player was able to deposit eight times their monthly limit and lose the entire amount within a single day.

Commission warns operators over ineffective safeguards

John Pierce, the Gambling Commission’s director of enforcement, said the case demonstrated the potentially serious consequences of depending on systems and controls that fail to react quickly enough to signs of gambling harm or financial crime.

“The serious consequences of relying on systems and controls that are unable to identify and respond to indicators of harm and financial crime quickly enough” were brought into focus by the case, Pierce said.

“We expect operators to ensure their safeguards are effective in practice to protect consumers and keep crime out of gambling,” he added.

Pierce noted that QuinnBet had acknowledged the shortcomings identified during the review and had moved promptly to strengthen its AML policies and procedures for detecting potential gambling harm.

The Commission also recognised the operator’s cooperation throughout the investigation. QuinnBet voluntarily reported some of the issues and quickly developed a remedial action plan, factors that the regulator considered when reaching the settlement.

However, the Commission said there were also aggravating circumstances, including the fact that it had previously issued public statements concerning similar failures at other gambling operators.

Operator failures remain central to AML risks

The action against QuinnBet comes as the Gambling Commission continues to place increased emphasis on anti-money laundering compliance across Britain's gambling industry.

A recently published risk assessment examining money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) vulnerabilities among licensed gambling businesses found that weaknesses on the operator side remain a significant contributor to overall AML and CTF risks.

Across several gambling subsectors, the Commission identified inadequate AML and CTF policies and controls, as well as insufficiently trained staff. The assessment also pointed to poorly configured or inadequate AML thresholds and weak monitoring of linked and duplicate customer accounts.

The focus on compliance has extended across the wider industry. Earlier this week, adult gaming centre operator Holland Park Leisure Limited was also fined for failing to participate in the mandatory multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, underlining the regulator's continued scrutiny of operators that fail to maintain effective consumer protection and financial crime safeguards. 

By fLEXI tEAM