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| Ladbrokes Coral fined after customer lost £98,000 | |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| The owner of Ladbrokes Coral has been fined £5.9m for not protecting vulnerable customers and for failings in its anti-money laundering measures. | |
| The Gambling Commission says that over a three-year period, Ladbrokes and Coral failed to put effective safeguards in place to "prevent consumers suffering gambling harm". | The Gambling Commission says that over a three-year period, Ladbrokes and Coral failed to put effective safeguards in place to "prevent consumers suffering gambling harm". |
| One customer lost £98,000 and had asked the company to stop sending promotions. | One customer lost £98,000 and had asked the company to stop sending promotions. |
| But the firm failed to carry out "social responsibility interactions". | But the firm failed to carry out "social responsibility interactions". |
| The Gambling Commission said the problems occurred between November 2014 and October 2017 and carried on after GVC Holdings bought Ladbrokes Coral. | |
| GVC Holdings will pay £4.8m and divest £1.1m "gained from customers as a result of its failings". | |
| In one instance, a Ladbrokes customer had 460 attempted deposits into their gambling account declined. However, they were still able to lose £98,000 over two and a half years. | |
| The commission also highlighted a Coral customer who spent £1.5m over nearly three years, during which time they logged onto their account an average 10 times a day for one month and lost £64,000 in one four week period. | |
| It said Coral "did not ask the customer to evidence their source of funds and could not provide evidence of any social responsibility interactions being carried out". | |
| 'Regrets' | |
| Richard Watson, executive director of the Gambling Commission, said: "These were systemic failings at a large operator which resulted in consumers being harmed and stolen money flowing though the business and this is unacceptable." | |
| GVC said it "acknowledges and regrets" that certain legacy systems and processes in place at Ladbrokes and Coral "did not adequately meet the regulatory requirements". | |
| "These historical failings were unacceptable and since the acquisition, I have overseen a systematic review of the enlarged group's player protection procedures and the individuals responsible for these problems have exited the business," added GVC chief executive Kenneth Alexander. | |
| "I am confident that we now have in place a robust and industry-leading approach to player protection." | |
| As well as the Ladbrokes and Coral brands GVC also owns gambling outlets bwin, Crystalbet, Eurobet, Neds and Sportingbet. | |
| Its games brands include CasinoClub, Foxy Bingo, Gala, Gioco Digitale, partypoker and PartyCasino. |