IMME Loses United Kingdom Gambling Commission License

IMME Loses United Kingdom Gambling Commission License ( Click to Enlarge )

Recent news out of the United Kingdom has seen IMME lose their license to operate. Based primarily around international lottery-based gaming, IMME was found to be violating a variety of different rules and policies that the UKGC has put in place to prevent money laundering and other issues.

United Kingdom Gambling Commission Pulls License From IMME

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) is known for being one of the toughest regulatory bodies in the industry. For this reason, pretty much any operator who is able to hold a UKGC license gains a lot from it. One reason for the value of these licenses is that they don’t play around when it comes to entities that violate their rules.

This has led to the lottery-based gaming company IMME to have their United Kingdom license pulled.

The things that led up to this license being pulled are frankly pretty ridiculous. Anyone who knows anything about how the UKGC could have told you how this was going to go. Additionally, the fact that IMME apparently thought they’d get away with it is pretty ridiculous.

This news is important for players for a really big reason. It shows that the UKGC is serious about protecting their players and the integrity of the industry.

What Happened With IMME

Initially, the investigation put into IMME was about not doing adequate due diligence. This is pretty important to help prevent money laundering in particular. However, once their license was paused for an investigation, the UK Gambling Commission found a whole lot more shady behavior going on.

It’s difficult to explain in general terms just how wrong their actions were. However, all it takes it looking at some of the specific customer service complaints that were received to understand.

  • More than three-quarters of the customer base for IMME were older than 60. Additionally, around 20 percent were older than 80. This is a very disproportionate demographic, and it shows how they targeted older individuals.
  • Lots of customers complained about harassment from IMME staff. For example, a customer in her 90s described receiving multiple calls each week. Another customer cited a situation of being called multiple times in a day, up to five or six times, until it was answered.
  • Additionally, these staff members in their call centers were instructed to use fake names. This is considered a major no-no in the industry since it’s primarily used to hide shady behavior.

As bad as all of this is, it really only scratches the surface.

Failing at Social Responsibility and Money Laundering Guidelines

In one case, there was a customer who was actually 100 years old when the investigation began. This individual wagered more than £23,000 in less than six months. Along these lines, deposits were being made in excess of £6,000 per month at one point. However, IMME never looked to find where the funds were coming from.

In a similar example, two of their biggest depositors were both retired postal workers. However, they were still able to wager more than £16,000 and more than £20,000, respectively, in a month. Again, IMME failed to look into this and find the source of the funds.

In what is perhaps one of the most blatant examples of not doing their due diligence for money laundering, we saw one of the most ridiculous cases we’ve ever seen. A 78-year-old customer was able to spend just under £64,000 in around 10 to 12 weeks. This is up there with another customer who at 74 years old deposited almost £10 in eight days. In both cases, no one from IMME tried to reach out at all.

Cleaning Up the Industry

If you violate the rules that the UKGC sets out, then you’re going to get your license removed. They’re really harsh about this, and it’s with good reason. Everything is set up with them to make sure that their licenses mean something in a serious way. Because of how harsh they are with their punishments for things like this, it helps to prevent a lot of problems that plagued the industry before this level of regulation was viable.

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