L & L Europe Limited, which runs seven online gambling websites including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com, has agreed to pay £900,000 after a Gambling Commission investigation found that it made it harder than it should have been for customers to withdraw their money. The regulator published the settlement on 21 October. The £900,000 is a payment in lieu of a financial penalty, and the company will also contribute to the Commission’s investigation costs.
The withdrawal problems
Two practices were at the centre of the case.
First, the company’s terms said customers could only have one withdrawal request open at a time, and could not ask for another until the first had been authorised. The Commission found this term unfair under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
Second, under the operator’s fraud and collusion policy, some customers had every fifth or tenth withdrawal pulled for a manual review. That meant they were asked for extra information before being paid. Commission rules say an operator should not demand information at the point of withdrawal if it could reasonably have asked for it earlier.
Other failings
The investigation also found weaknesses in anti-money laundering controls. These relied heavily on fixed financial thresholds and sampling rather than on each customer’s risk profile. The company did not follow its own due diligence procedures, did not consider the risks of newly opened bank accounts, and accepted funds whose source had not been shown to be wages, business income or savings.
On safer gambling, alerts designed to flag signs of harm, such as long sessions or repeated failed deposits, were switched on for some of the company’s websites but not all of them. The firm also had no process for judging whether its overall approach to customer interaction was working.
The regulator’s message
Sue Young, the Commission’s Executive Director of Operations, said people who have winnings should be able to withdraw them “swiftly” without being held up by unfair terms or by checks that should have been done earlier. She added that while much of the Commission’s enforcement work focuses on money laundering and social responsibility, it will also act where gambling is not fair and open.
The case shows the Commission is prepared to treat withdrawal restrictions as an enforcement issue in their own right.
What it means for players
Under Gambling Commission rules, a licensed site should do its identity and verification checks early, not spring them on you when you try to cash out. A rule that stops you making more than one withdrawal request, or that holds your money while it asks for information it could have requested at sign-up, is the kind of term this case found unfair.
Before you deposit, it is worth reading a site’s withdrawal terms and completing verification straight away. If a withdrawal is delayed and the operator cannot give a clear legal or regulatory reason, use its complaints process first and then escalate to the independent dispute resolution service it is required to name. Our guide on how to choose a betting site covers what to check before you sign up.
Sources
- L & L Europe pays £900,000 for failures including withdrawal delays (Gambling Commission)
- L & L Europe Limited: regulatory sanctions (Gambling Commission public register)
Written in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it and log it on our corrections page.
About the author
The BettingSeeker News Desk covers regulation, operator news and safer gambling developments in the UK, the US and Canada. Every story is based on primary sources such as regulator announcements, government publications and company filings, or on reporting by established news outlets, and every source is linked at the end of the article.
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