In an unexpected turn of events, the owner of William Hill and 888, evoke, has announced the group is considering selling or breaking up after UK gambling tax regulations hit...
The UK Treasury raised the ML risk rating from low to medium
The UK government raised the money laundering (ML) risk rating for the casinos from low to medium, with online gambling marked as a central area of concern.
The report by the Treasury’s 2025 National Risk Assessment (NRA) highlighted the post-pandemic shift towards online gambling. Technological loopholes and weak oversight in white-label partnerships have created ground for criminals to manipulate both licensed and unlicensed remote casinos.
Many money laundering cases involve criminals simply spending illicit proceeds recreationally, or more deliberate schemes, where actors gamble to disguise the origin of funds, later withdrawing money through legitimate payment methods.
Amongst other threats, the Treasury also finds crash games as an emerginf money laundering risk, as its fast-paced format may help criminals disguise illicit transactions.
The report mentions that crash games are especially popular in crypto casinos, which are illegal if accessible from the UK, but are also being offered by some licensed operators.
Treasury’s 2025 National Risk Assessment (NRA) report says:
“The increased interest from the regulated casino market in crash games may pose an opportunity to launder criminal funds through GB-regulated operators.
As there is an incentive for legitimate customers to use these games in a similar way as may be useful to criminals, criminals could conceal the high-risk behaviour of cashing out quickly with limited gameplay within the context of the crash game (where these behaviours are inherently more common).”
One of the most prominent concerns mentioned in the report involves the use of white-label partnerships in the online gambling sector.
The report states:
“Historically, some white-label arrangements included gambling operators relying on unlicensed third parties for elements of their compliance approach. In these cases, the licensee would remain responsible for compliance, although they did not always have sufficient oversight.
These arrangements are now less common, but risks remain where white-label providers offer large numbers of websites, as failure by a single remote casino to control the ML risks relating to their white-label partnerships can impact a significant number of websites.”
Other threats include criminals using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to disguise their physical location and appear as if they are operating within the UK. The Treasury flags a troubling rise in the use of false identities and AI-generated documents to bypass onboarding checks on online platforms.
High-stakes bettor Lee Paul Gibson’s attempt to recover around £1.5 million from Betfair in player losses accumulated between 2009 and 2019 was dismissed by a UK Court of...
