The street that is high shops throughout the UK are filled with desperate punters and casual gamblers alike, and you can be forgiven for thinking that a few of them may fall under the miscreant category. But what’s surprising about a number of users is that they are really drug dealers who are using the facilities not to gamble their ill-gotten gains, but to ‘clean’ them.

Minimal Regulations Make Laundering Easy

Fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) appeared in the united kingdom back in 2001 and they are only subject to light regulation, meaning players have been able to bet a reported £100 ($158) every 10 20 moments on a few of the machines. And since the average FOBT rakes in around £900 ($1,430) per week in profits, in accordance with industry figures, bookies through the entire country have actually jumped up to speed and Britain happens to be home to 33,345 of these addictive devices.

Nevertheless now a 24-year-old unnamed drug dealer, who feeds £200 ($316) into the devices at a time while jumping between six wagering shops in his local town, told a UK newspaper that using these FOBTs is ‘what turns money clean’ that is dirty.

He claims drug dealers put their money through the devices, cashing out the majority after taking small losses from their wagering system and obtaining a imprinted solution which shows that they’ve been gambling that day. This then offers them reason to carry huge amounts of cash if they are questioned by law enforcement.

Seedy as it may sound, it seems that regulating figures know of this money laundering scheme, since Coral bookmakers were recently fined £90,000 ($143,000) in profits it made from one money-laundering medication dealer that has put around £1 million through its bookie shops.

The body that is regulatory fined Coral, the Gambling Commission, also recently announced publicly that FOBTs present a ‘high inherent money-laundering risk’ and warned, in a letter to the industry trade association, about ‘a retail wagering model that features high volumes of cash transactions, particularly where this includes low person spend and a top degree of anonymity.’

Gambling Act Not Doing Its Job

The 2005 Gambling Act which now regulates the gambling terminals originally stated that preventing gambling from becoming a supply of crime or being linked with crime had been one of its main goals. Demonstrably it hasn’t been too effective, as the FOBTs enable the criminals to easily and quickly convert large amounts of real cash into digital currency, then later convert this back in to cash that is hard. It generally seems to really be considered a very efficient way of laundering money.

Drug dealers evidently use these terminals methodically to be able to simply clean their money because the machines are incredibly gently policed. Some bookies also let the gamblers to own their funds transferred electronically either to their online gambling account, such as Ladbrokes, or straight into their bank account, something offered by William Hill, leaving a digital trace which makes the money appear as gambling winnings.

Drug dealers do reportedly have to change their gambling style up here and there in order to go completely unnoticed, but whether or not this is just sufficient for the bookies to deny a knowledge of the illegality of their punters or if the tactics actually work is anyone’s cynical guess.

But despite bookies’ statements it seems unlikely that the individual outlets would turn away money regardless, especially when many ‘small-time’ drug dealers who use the bookies to launder their money are reported to be worth around £15,000 a year each to the betting industry that they comply with regulatory obligations.

Evidently, even clearly stolen bills are easily utilized on the terminals.

‘You’ve got people money that is laundering day with cash from robberies and medications. Do you know that dyed notes from bank robberies could be submitted to the Bank of England and the organization gets reimbursed?’ explained the 24-year-old drug dealer. ‘Staff knows what pays their wages.’