Earlier this month the Gambling Commission, the industry regulator, fined Coral bookmakers £90,000 in profits it made from one drug dealer who had laundered almost £1m in its shops. Last month the industry regulator also publicly admitted what has long been privately acknowledged: FOBTs present a "high inherent money-laundering risk".
The machines take £200 at a time. This would have been mostly in £10 and £20 notes. It's not clear from the article if the launderer put the whole £1m through the machines, or "just" £90k.
Dealers feed their drug money through the machines, losing a little and then cashing out with the vast majority of their stake, James says. They can then collect a printed ticket showing they have gambled that day – meaning that if stopped by police, they can answer questions about why an apparently unemployed young man carries hundreds of pounds in rolled-up cash.
Comments
I used to think it'd be weird for criminals to use gambling to launder money - it'd be too expensive. But then I heard about FOB machines.
The UK has something called "fixed odds betting machines". These are sometimes used to launder money.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-mach...
The machines take £200 at a time. This would have been mostly in £10 and £20 notes. It's not clear from the article if the launderer put the whole £1m through the machines, or "just" £90k.
Either way, it's a lot of cash.