Data from the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has confirmed bookmakers’ suspicion that fixed odds betting terminals (FOBT) are being used by criminals to launder drug money.
The UKGC has revealed that bookies filed 633 suspected money laundering operations to the National Crime Agency between April 2014 and March 2015. The data was released in response to a Freedom of Information request for the number of such Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).
In September, West Yorkshire Police arrested a drug dealer after raiding his home and finding £18,000 in cash, £30,000 of designer clothes and betting shop tickets with a value of £36,000.
In 2013, UKGC ordered Gala Coral to pay back £90,000 they had won from a single money launderer who had “gambled” around £900,000 in the bookmakers’ north east shops. The commission also acknowledged that FOBTs present a “high inherent money-laundering risk”.
A drug dealer told The Guardian how he laundered his drug money via FOBTs. He would pump his drug income into betting terminals in casinos or betting shops, staked on both red and black and cashed out over 400 times, before collecting a ticket that legitimized his hundreds of pounds. Some of the bookies such as Ladbrokes allow punters to transfer their winnings to an online account while William Hill winnings can be credited to debit cards.
The Campaign for Fairer Gambling, which is lobbying for the maximum FOBT stake to be reduced to £2 a spin to end high street money laundering, said that the 633 SARs submitted to the police are not isolated incidents but generally arise when there is long-term concern over a customers’ activity.
“Each of those reports could relate to lengthy periods of money laundering or disposing of the proceeds of crime on the part of a single or group of customers,” said Adrian Parkinson, CFG spokesman.
The Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) pointed out that betting shops have not become hotbeds of crime and remain one of the safest place to gamble.
“When compared with the casino sector, 9,000 betting shops generated approximately the same number of SARs as 140 casinos in the UK and at least 93% of betting shops reported no suspicious activity at all,” said ABB spokesman.
