L & L Europe to pay £900k over withdrawal delays and AML failings

The Gambling Commission also found missed signs of harm, including an 18-year-old who lost £4,000 in eight minutes without the operator identifying the risk.

L & L Europe Limited will pay £900,000 under a regulatory settlement with the Gambling Commission. The regulator found that between October 2024 and October 2025 the operator delayed customer withdrawals, relied too heavily on spending thresholds to spot money laundering risk, and missed signs of gambling harm.

What the Commission found

L & L Europe runs seven websites, including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com, and hypercasino.com. A compliance assessment of its remote operating licence led to a review under section 116 of the Gambling Act 2005. The review found breaches of five sets of requirements in the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP).

Withdrawals held back

Under the term deemed unfair, customers could not make a new withdrawal request until their first one had been authorised. Officials also saw withdrawal requests withheld for reasons other than legal or regulatory requirements. The Commission said L & L Europe acted swiftly to address this breach.

Separately, the operator’s fraud and collusion policy meant it manually reviewed every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some customers. Some of those customers had to provide more information before their withdrawals were processed. L & L Europe accepted that this delayed withdrawals and that the information could, in some cases, have been requested earlier. It has changed the process, and withdrawals are now withheld only for legal or regulatory reasons.

Money laundering checks

The Commission said the operator’s controls were based largely on financial thresholds and sampling instead of customer risk profiles. Its risk assessment also lacked clarity on which controls applied to British customers.

In one case, a customer deposited £4,400 within eight hours of registering and withdrew £50. L & L Europe accepted the customer’s source of funds as coming from a ‘gambling account’. It did not consider the risks that the bank account had been opened two weeks before the customer registered, or that the money could not be shown to come from employment, business income, or savings. The customer, who had registered the day before, then chased a withheld withdrawal and was asked for more documents. They gave an incorrect address twice, which did not raise any suspicion at the operator. 

L & L Europe has since created a standalone money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment for Great Britain.

Missed signs of harm

Safer gambling alerts focused mainly on financial thresholds. Alerts for time spent gambling, failed deposits, and number of deposits were switched on for some of the operator’s websites but not all of them. An alert was generated only when two indicators appeared on the same day. The only strong indicator of harm in its process was customer losses within 24 hours.

The public statement sets out these cases:

• A customer made 84 failed deposits in seven days because of insufficient funds, and the system did not flag potential harm.
• A customer hit the financial threshold on the day they registered but did not get a call until two weeks later. By then, they had reached the same threshold numerous times.
• A 21-year-old lost £6,500 within three days of opening an account, and their age was not taken into account as a risk indicator.
• An 18-year-old lost £4,000 in eight minutes, and again the risk indicators were not identified.
• A customer who had recently returned from self-exclusion had set a £1,000 net monthly deposit limit as part of that return. Over nine days they deposited £2,898 and withdrew £1,800, which put them £98 over the limit.

The settlement

The £900,000 is a payment in lieu of a financial penalty and will go to the Consolidated Fund. L & L Europe will also pay towards the Commission’s investigation costs.

The Commission called the failings serious. It noted they were similar to previous cases for which it had already published lessons for the industry. Mitigating factors were the prompt action plan, full co-operation with the investigation, and accepting the failings at an early stage.

Sue Young, executive director of operations at the Gambling Commission, said: 

‘A basic expectation is that when you have winnings you can withdraw those swiftly without hinderance from unfair terms and conditions or the operator failing to carry out checks at an earlier stage. That is essential to consumer trust.’

Young added: ‘We hope this case sends a clear reminder to the industry that, although much of our enforcement action frequently relates to anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings, we will not hesitate to act when we see incidents of gambling not being fair and open.’

The amount matches the £900,000 that Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, which runs betfred.com, agreed to pay in June over safer gambling failings.

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