QuinnBet agrees £609,104 settlement over AML and safer gambling failures

QuinnBet will pay £609,104 after a Gambling Commission review uncovered anti-money laundering (AML) and safer gambling shortcomings across its online operation.

The failings, recorded between March 2023 and August 2025, included delayed source-of-funds work, missed financial vulnerability checks and systems that did not flag some extreme betting patterns quickly enough.

The operator has since strengthened its controls and cooperated with the regulator.

QuinnBet payment includes £193,118 disgorgement

The Gambling Commission began its regulatory review following a compliance assessment of QuinnBet’s remote operating licence.

The settlement requires QuinnBet to make a £609,104 payment instead of receiving a financial penalty. This amount includes the disgorgement of £193,118 obtained as a result of some of the identified failings. QuinnBet will also make a separate contribution towards the Commission’s investigation costs.

The £609,104 will be directed to the UK government’s Consolidated Fund rather than distributed to gambling harm prevention projects.

AML controls failed to match spending with known income

The Commission found QuinnBet did not always act quickly enough when customer spending appeared disproportionate to their known financial circumstances.

One customer supplied payslips showing monthly earnings of approximately £2,000 but was subsequently able to deposit and lose £9,000 over four days. Another deposited around £120,000 and withdrew £111,000 in slightly less than three months. QuinnBet assumed the customer was recycling gambling winnings, despite not obtaining evidence that the deposited money came from those winnings. Although the customer provided a bank statement and tax return, neither document showed transactions involving QuinnBet.

The regulator also identified insufficient controls for ensuring Suspicious Activity Reports were submitted promptly after the relevant information became available.

Thousands of bets did not trigger safer gambling alerts

QuinnBet’s safer gambling processes relied heavily on manual reviews and account suspensions, creating delays when customers displayed indicators of potential harm.

In one example, a customer placed approximately 4,800 bets in one day and another 7,000 the following day. This activity was not identified and referred for review. A separate customer substantially increased their stakes after a large win, wagering more than £215,000 in one day. This included multiple bets exceeding £5,000, but the activity was not identified until a report was produced the following morning.

The Commission said QuinnBet’s policies treated behaviours including high spending, extended gambling sessions and increasing stakes as strong indicators of harm. However, the operator’s systems did not always identify them quickly enough.

Platform migration disrupted player protections

Further problems arose when QuinnBet moved its operations to a new platform. Human error and software-update problems caused two deposit-limit controls to fail on some accounts. This allowed 194 customers to deposit, and potentially lose, more than their intended limits.

QuinnBet also operated a manual process for applying lower deposit limits to customers aged between 18 and 24. One young customer deposited eight times their intended monthly limit before the restriction became active and lost the entire amount in one day. A separate migration error meant some customers did not undergo financial vulnerability checks when they reached the required threshold.

When QuinnBet subsequently completed the checks, it found 41 customers would have failed and 136 would have required restrictions to be placed on their accounts.

Commission recognises QuinnBet’s remedial action

The Commission said the failings breached AML licence condition 12.1.1 and Social Responsibility Code Provisions 3.4.3 and 3.4.4. However, the regulator acknowledged that the problems did not represent a broad systemic failure across all QuinnBet controls.

Mitigating factors included QuinnBet’s lack of previous enforcement action, its early acceptance of the failings and its voluntary reporting of some issues. The operator also developed a remedial action plan, cooperated with the investigation and voluntarily surrendered funds accumulated through some of the failures.

The Commission treated its previous warnings to other gambling operators about similar weaknesses as an aggravating factor. Director of enforcement John Pierce said the case demonstrated the consequences of systems that could not respond to financial crime and gambling-harm indicators quickly enough.

“We expect operators to ensure their safeguards are effective in practice to protect consumers and keep crime out of gambling.” - John Pierce

Pierce added that QuinnBet had acted immediately to strengthen its AML procedures and improve how it identifies and responds to signs of gambling harm.