Ladbrokes Coral fined after customer lost £98,000

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”.

One customer lost £98,000 and had asked the company to stop sending promotions.

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”.

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.”