The Ladbrokes brand of the British gambling giant Entain is currently facing legal action in High Court. The lawsuit accuses the company of allowing a gambling addict to place significant sums as bets after failing to impose certain restrictions on the customer’s account.
The legal action was filed by the Ladbrokes customers less than two weeks after Entain faced a massive monetary penalty for violating safe gambling rules in the UK.
The player, who placed bets in both the UK and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has launched his High Court claim against the gambling operator, accusing Ladbrokes of violating its operating permit by failing to protect him as it carried out no effective source-of-funds, anti-money laundering checks and monitoring his actually extensive level of gambling.
The bets were placed between 2015 and May 2016. The gambling operator rejected the accusations of violating any contractual terms.
Simon Rose accuses the popular British gambling brand of allowing him to lose a total of £231,000 over seven months, with his overall bets in the same period totalling £1.8 million. According to the accusations, the player was given a daily deposit limit worth £20,000 and placed an average of £18,000 as bets on the days he gambled, although his payment after tax and insurance deduction amounted to only £3,000 monthly.
Problem Gambler Claims He Was Allowed to Spend Thousands in 7 Months between 2015 and May 2016
Mr Rose, a problem gambler, claims that no checks about his source of funds have been made until he had accumulated massive losses amounting to more than £100,000. When the customer had a conversation with a representative of the gambling brand, it was noted that he gambled more than he received as an income and had borrowed money to do so.
The player set a £1,000 weekly deposit limit on his customer account. According to his claims, he was then permitted to boost this deposit limit to £20,000 a day by April 2016. In May 2016, he permanently banned himself from Ladbrokes’ gambling services and is now claiming a return of all the money he placed as bets at the time.
As mentioned above, the legal claims against Ladbrokes come only a few weeks after the parent company of the gambling brand faced a record fine from the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) over unacceptable violations of anti-money laundering and social responsibility rules. The country’s gambling regulatory body said that the operator is required to pay a total of £17 million, with £14 million being owned for failures at LC International and another £3 million for Ladbrokes’ violations.
Entain, which was previously operated as GVC Holdings, reached an agreement to purchase Ladbrokes Coral for the price of £4 billion in 2017. At the time, the group was headed by Kenny Alexander, the CEO who announced his decision to step down from his position in 2020, only days before a UK tax investigation into a potential corporate offering linked to the company’s former online gambling business in Turkey was launched.
As previously reported by Casino Guardian, the group officially changed its name to Entain in December 2020.
The gambling operator was unable to comment on the active High Court lawsuit but noted that the claims of the player had taken place two years prior to the acquisition of the Ladbrokes brand.
- Author
Olivia Cole
