Gambling firm that coaxed older people to bet thousands will escape sanctions – The Guardian

An online gambling firm that contacted older people and persuaded them to bet tens of thousands of pounds on lottery results is to escape sanctions, despite a damning regulatory investigation into its practices.

IMME Ltd, which is based in the Isle of Man and trades as Lotteries.com and The Lottery Centre, committed extensive breaches of its gambling licence, according to the Gambling Commission.

The firms sales agents, who used fake names on the phone, disproportionately targeted older people, it said, with 75% of customers aged 60 to 79 and 20% 80 or older.

One customer, who was 100 when the commission began its review, bet 23,839 in just five months without IMME inquiring about his source of funds. The company knew two of its top depositors were retired postal workers but allowed one to bet 20,345 in five months and the other 16,207 in six months.

According to the report, staff members appeared to have no access to customers records, meaning they could not carry out responsible gambling checks. The company held no records of its interactions with a 78-year-old customer who spent 63,951 in just over three months.

The Gambling Commissions review also found multiple failings in the way the company marketed its services.

The Lotteries.com website is no longer active in the UK but an archived version displays logos for national lotteries around the world and refers to record-breaking jackpots. However, the company was not in fact offering the chance to enter lotteries, only the opportunity to bet on their outcome. This was not made clear, the review found.

In addition, the website claimed that when customers were betting on a lottery, they were also contributing to underlying good causes. This was not the case.

IMME drummed up business by repeatedly telephoning older people, the review found.

One woman in her 90s was called several times a week, while another was called every 30-40 minutes until the phone was answered.

IMME does not have a website and its two main brands are no longer accessible from the UK.

Documents filed with the Isle of Man companies registry in September 2020 name Gloria Jean Evans, a Canadian, as its director, with an address in the islands capital, Douglas. Its finance director was named as Paul Michael Whelan, an Irish national based in Hertfordshire.

Both Evans and Whelan have surrendered personal licences to run a gambling business, according to Gambling Commission records.

A spokesperson for IMME said the regulator had not acknowledged that many of the failings were legacy issues that had been addressed, including via investment in compliance.

IMME ensures that every player is telephoned as soon as they spend 160 and every player is assigned a customer care agent who monitored their play, it said. Additionally, all players over 70 years of age received a social interaction call after every sale regardless of size.

The company said it would return any customer funds it still held and had run an extensive effort to do so since September. It added that it had decided to withdraw from licensed gambling in the UK.

IMMEs licence to operate was suspended in March 2020 and the Gambling Commission said it would have been revoked had the company not surrendered it, adding that the company had failed to cooperate with the investigation.

Because IMME and its senior staff surrendered their licences, the Gambling Commission can take no further action against them.

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Matt Zarb-Cousin, the director of campaign group Clean Up Gambling, said the case underlined the regulators lack of resources, particularly since it took on responsibility for monitoring offshore-owned entities in 2014.

Wholly inadequate due diligence around that time has left the regulator playing catchup, while being under-resourced, he said. It should have the capacity to review every single licensee to ensure these practices are not repeated.

A review of gambling regulation will consider a possible significant increase in funding for the commission.

Helen Venn, the executive director of the Gambling Commission, said: There is no room in Britains gambling industry for operators who fail in the way IMME have.

The regulator said the company was still running a lottery ticket syndicate business, which it does not require a Gambling Commission licence to do.

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Gambling firm that coaxed older people to bet thousands will escape sanctions - The Guardian