FORMER Halesowen firm In Touch Games has been hit with a £6.1m fine after a Gambling Commission investigation identified failures to prevent money laundering and problem gambling.

The firm – which operates 11 online gambling websites including bonusboss.co.uk, cashmo.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, jammymonkey.com and slotfactory.com – moved from its base at Fountain House, Halesowen, in December axing around 50 staff and has moved to Great Charles Street in Birmingham after being taken over by Skywind Holdings.

The new £6.1m fine is the third time it has faced regulatory action - in 2019 it paid a £2.2m settlement for regulatory failures and in 2021 it received a £3.4m fine and warning for further failures.

Social responsibility failures included: Not interacting with a customer until seven weeks after they had been flagged for erratic play patterns and extended periods of play.

Accepting a customer’s word they earned £6,000 a month without verifying this after the customer account was flagged due to customer spend and gambling during unsociable hours.

Anti-money laundering failures included: Not adequately assessing the risk of customers who had benefited from a life insurance policy, those with links to high-risk jurisdictions, or those who were politically exposed individuals within its money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment.

In Touch Games was also found to have not sufficiently considered the Commission’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment or the Commission’s guidance.

It also did not follow its own policy to request source of funds information from customers who had deposited and lost £10,000 in a 12-month period.

Kay Roberts, Executive Director of Operations, 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.”