Black Market Gambling and Debanking: The Hidden Money Laundering Threats Government Cannot Afford To Ignore

Author: Jeremy Asher, Senior Consultant Regulatory Solicitor   | Last updated: 26th May 2026

Jeremy Asher is a regulatory Solicitor with Setfords, representing clients who have been unfairly debanked. He is the founder and director of the Financial Fraud Awareness Campaign, a not-for-profit C.I.C. backed by an advisory board of counter-fraud professionals. It aims to work with and support the police, government, and other national organisations to deliver free, face-to-face fraud awareness education to all communities, ages, and demographics to counter the spread of money muling. Jeremy writes prolifically and is the author of: Fraud Markers, De-banking, & Financial Crime: A Legal Analysis of Counter-fraud Practices in the UK and Beyond. Jeremy will be giving the below speech at Economic Crime Experts Directory – Research centres and groups | UWE Bristol on Thursday 28th May 2026.

Abstract

Jeremy Asher highlights two important areas that have been missed by the National Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing 2025 Areas of Research Interest. He will argue that black market gambling and those who have been debanked after being loaded to the National Fraud Database pose real and present dangers – neither risks have been highlighted before. He puts forward extensive statistical analysis of the former threat and will argue that affordability checks are counter-productive, driving punters into the black-market. In particular, he assesses how affordability checks push to black market gambling, and how that dynamic increases exposure to black market gambling money laundering. He explains the size and depth of the threat, which is enormous and international, with a specific focus on black market gambling money laundering UK patterns and typologies that are too often underestimated.

He will argue that Government policy needs to urgently address the nature of the threat and that the reforms suggested by the Government and Gambling Commission are untenable from a counter-fraud perspective. Asher’s analysis shows how affordability checks push to black market gambling by displacing legitimate players into opaque channels where oversight is minimal. This displacement not only swells illicit turnover but also amplifies black market gambling money laundering risks by enabling criminal actors to commingle funds at scale. In the UK, the convergence of unregulated operators and digital payment gateways intensifies black market gambling money laundering UK concerns, creating vectors that are exploited by organised crime and cross-border facilitators.

In relation to the threat posed by those who have been debanked, he will put forward anecdotal and statistical evidence explaining why such data subjects pose a longstanding threat to money laundering and terrorist financing when the process is mishandled. Individuals recorded in the National Fraud Database can face unintended consequences that escalate National Fraud Database debanking risks. These National Fraud Database debanking risks include loss of access to mainstream financial services, which may push affected individuals toward informal or illicit financial channels where monitoring is weak. In turn, such displacement can intersect with black market gambling ecosystems, compounding black market gambling money laundering exposures and diminishing the efficacy of traditional safeguards.

Asher contends that a narrow focus on headline metrics misses how policy trade-offs reshape criminal opportunity. He highlights how black market gambling money laundering thrives in environments where compliance measures are applied bluntly rather than proportionately. By mapping the flow of funds and correlating transaction behaviors with unlicensed operators, he demonstrates that black market gambling money laundering UK indicators proliferate when legitimate consumer activity is nudged offshore or into unregulated markets. This creates a feedback loop: stricter but poorly targeted controls increase displacement, and displacement fuels larger laundering volumes that are harder to detect.

To address these failings, Asher recommends recalibrating affordability regimes to avoid perverse incentives while strengthening targeted supervision of high-risk nodes. He proposes enhanced public-private intelligence sharing that focuses on typologies linked to black market gambling money laundering, combined with proportional thresholds that reduce unnecessary friction for compliant consumers. Parallel reforms should mitigate National Fraud Database debanking risks by improving data quality, redress mechanisms, and time-bound review processes so that erroneous markers do not force consumers into risky alternatives. These measures would reduce the likelihood that affordability checks push to black market gambling and, by extension, limit opportunities for black market gambling money laundering.

Finally, he urges a UK-specific strategy that recognises the cross-border character of illicit betting while confronting black market gambling money laundering UK channels that leverage domestic payment rails. By balancing consumer protection with evidence-led oversight, policymakers can dampen the incentives driving migration to unregulated markets. In doing so, they can curtail the growth of black market gambling money laundering, lower systemic exposure created by National Fraud Database debanking risks, and ensure that well-intentioned affordability measures do not inadvertently push to black market gambling.

Speech:

Thank you for inviting me to speak at Economic Crime Experts Directory – Research centres and groups | UWE Bristol, today.

The National Economic Crime Centre and the Home Office will have received plenty of food for thought today covering the Areas of Research Interest.  It particular it wants to hear about vulnerabilities, offenders and harms; it wants to consider its response, particularly in relation to prevention, enforcement and impact.

The National Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing 2025 highlights some of the regulated activity risks it is interested in – I am going to suggest two areas are added to that list: black market gambling and debanking.

Let’s deal with black market gambling first.

The NRA has increased the money laundering risk threat from Casinos from low to medium.[1]  Bookmaking, or betting as the NRA refers to, falls out of the Money Laundering Regulations, but it is subject to stringent licensing requirements.  However, the NRA has not considered the risk created by affordability checks, or financial risk assessments (FRAs), proposed by the Gambling Commission and Government to manage the adverse impact and addiction of gambling on consumers. 

The proposed provisions apply to punters spending £1,000 within a rolling 24-hour period or £2,000 within 90 days. Bookmakers are then supposed to check with the three main credit reference agencies. However, there is inconsistency in reporting by credit reference agencies – I know this from my legal practice too. In this scenario credit reference agencies are to give a simple “yes” or “no” response, at which point the bookmakers will ask the punter for proof of income. The Betting and Gaming Council, which represents betting shops, casinos, online and bingo, estimates 1.2 million punters will be assessed, of which 40% will be requested to provide financial information, but it anticipates 80% (or 384,000 punters) will refuse to co-operate.[2] AI and chat boxes already exist to help punters to bypass such checks and locate black market opportunities.[3]

Consumers are leaving the relative safety of regulated bookmakers and falling into the black market in droves – there has been a £2 billion annual decline in remote betting turnover on horse racing between 2021 and 2025.[4]  Already in the UK it is estimated that 9% of gambling takes place in the unregulated sector.[5]  The World Advertising Center projects that black market operators are predicted to spend £845 million on advertising in the UK this year, with the regulated sector reducing its spend, with the unregulated sector predicted to overtake the regulated sector on advertising spend by 2028.[6] 

Looking for advice on a money laundering issue?

If you find yourself caught up in accusations of money laundering, it’s vital to get the right legal advice as soon as possible. Jeremy Asher is a regulatory lawyer with more than 25 years of experience dealing with serious and high-profile cases, and can advise on the regulations of this area of law, and assist those facing accusations.

Reach out today

As reported by the Racing Post on many occasions, Government and the Gambling Commission appear deaf to the threats that affordability checks bring.[7]  The Gambling Commission has stated that the only way to test the theory behind financial risk assessments is to put them into practice.[8] That proposal led to the resignation of one of the key advisers from his role in the Gambling Act Review Evaluation Advisory Group in protest at the Gambling Commission’s stance.[9].

The Government’s own statistics show the scale of betting and gaming is enormous – ‘the provisional 2025 to 2026 first quarter (April to June) total betting and gaming [tax] receipts is £982 million, which is £98 million (11%) higher than in the same period during the last financial year’[10] coming off a yield of £16.8 billion for the year to March 2025.[11] However, as I have demonstrated such receipts from the regulated sector will not continue at that level for much longer. And whilst the Government has committed £26 million to the Gambling Commission over the next three years to investigate and disrupt illegal gambling[12] the key issue here has not been addressed by the NRA. 

The threat of black-market book making is international, as the Hong Kong Jockey Club has warned,[13] and the risk of the black market overwhelming the regulated sector is plain to see with more than 3,000 desist notices issued by the Gambling Commission last year.[14] Over regulation in the Netherlands has been disastrous with more than 50% of betting now going to unregulated black-market operators.[15] 

Let’s be frank about it – affordability checks are a real, live, and rapidly growing existential threat to the regulated sector, with consequential knock-on effects in loss of revenue to the treasury and the loss of livelihoods in the bookmaking, horse racing and bloodstock industries[16] – already this year hundreds of betting shops have closed, exacerbated by an increase in remote betting duty from 21% to 40%.[17] The UK Government is asleep at the wheel and seemingly blind to the very real and live risks that affordability checks create.  Reports indicate that it is not listening the racing and bookmaking industries – perhaps it will listen to the counter fraud community instead?

A massive worldwide money laundering issue is being created before our eyes. How do people cash out their winnings from black market bookmaking? They must use devious methods, most likely through crypto exchanges. The activity is hidden from view, and that is why it is dangerous and a massive threat.  At least when punters bet in the regulated sector it is transparent to the banking community. And once in the black market, funds stay in the black market and the risk of it being used for terrorist financing and other illegal activities is only heightened, as is obvious. So is the risk of funds that are cashed out being merged with criminal property – none of the winnings are untainted on the basis that betting duty has not been paid. 

Alex Wood FRSA has done some brilliant work recently highlighting how easy it is for fake bookmaking accounts to be created in the black market.[18] Let’s not forget that the regulated bookmakers and advertising at least signpost warnings for safer gambling and to organisations such as GamStop – the unregulated sector does not.

Here are the facts behind the Racing Post’s “Big Punting Survey” of 10,000 punters: 61% of punters confronted by affordability checks refused to provide the financial information requested; 64% said that their decision to use the black market was in direct response to an affordability check; 44% of bettors have had restrictions placed on their accounts; and 24% of bettors have been subjected to affordability checks. 

The result:

“The survey found that 4.9 per cent of all punters have used the black market in the last year, an increase of a third from 3.6 per cent when the question was asked two years ago.

However, more worryingly the poll shows that the proportion of bettors using illegal operators increases rapidly alongside average bet size, with one in five £100-a-bet punters and more than one of three of those who bet £1,000 utilising the black market, indicating that the sport’s highest-spending customers are turning away from regulated betting in large numbers”.[19

The recent case of Alan Spence who lost a High Court battle to save himself from paying £840,000 in debts after being sued by an unregulated bookmaker shows the scale of the losses caused to the regulated sector by just one punter.  As the Racing Post stated when it considered the implication of that case: “The Government owns this mess”.[20]

As Tom Kerr, editor of the Racing Post wrote last week:

“Affordability checks are hugely unpopular, have an unproven impact on harmful gambling, cost the state money in lost tax revenues, feed the booming black market, are an illiberal intrusion into people’s personal lives, threaten the future of horseracing, and don’t work. But apart from that, they’re a great idea.”[21] 

I have asked the cohort of law and criminology students here at University of the West of England working with Samantha Mapston and the Financial Fraud Awareness Campaign (FFAC) to produce awareness training specifically covering this issue, aimed at diverting people away from black market gambling.

However, the finance and counter fraud communities need to step in here and align against Government and Gambling Commission proposals.

The second concern I wish to raise is one that has been created by the counter fraud community at the behest of Government – debanking.

The NRA reported that ‘In 2023, Cifas estimated 37,000 bank accounts had behaviour associated with muling. A further FCA review found 194,084 money mules were offboarded by 25 firms between January 2022 and September 2023, only 37% of whom were reported to the National Fraud Database. This muling is often high volume, involving daily transactions of moderate value. The Cifas figures suggest under 30s account for 64% of intelligence indicative of money muling. Difficult socio-economic circumstances may also risk making individuals more susceptible to targeting, particularly through social media making it easier to recruit. Business accounts are increasingly targeted by money mules and now account for 1 in 5 cases reported to Cifas’.[22]

Cifas’ Fraudscape 2026 report noted that in the previous twelve months more than 444,000 cases had been reported to the National Fraud Database.[23]  If you accumulate the past six years’ worth of statistics, more than 2 million Cifas markers are currently loaded.  Synectics Solutions and National Hunter do not provide statistics.  Anyone marked to an of these databases is at risk of being debanked.

I wrote in my book:

‘The closure of bank accounts and denial of credit facilities commonly results in people losing their jobs or businesses.  Due to anti-human slavery legislation, employees now need their own bank accounts before they can be paid or commence employment.  Those working in financial services who have had markers loaded against them face instant dismissal and are effectively blacklisted from employment in the sector.  Such fraud markers can be used against those who have been dismissed for “relevant conduct” that is frequently not fraud related at all.  People who have been marked can lose their homes and families.  Many of those marked suffer with poor mental health.  Fraud markers therefore act as a restriction on a Subject’s liberty.  The increased use of fraud markers risks creating an economic subclass, with associated long-term adverse implications for our society’.[24]

Following Brexit, the previous and present Governments amended the law relating to data privacy. In July last year, the Data (Users and Access) Act 2025[25] created the legal concept of the “recognised legitimate interest”[26]. In short, in certain circumstances data processors do not have to have any regard to the potential ramifications that their actions will have on the data subject. This law is undoubtably an attack on justice, liberty, Human Rights and individual rights and freedoms – it favours protecting the interests of corporations and the state over the individual.  It removes the UK from obligations to consider the balancing interest between the privacy rights of individuals against the interest of the state under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

It also means that if someone find themselves marked and debanked it is even more difficult than ever before to successfully challenge the decisions. And let’s again be frank about it, many fraud markers are incorrectly loaded.  I reported in my book that Cifas had admitted to an MP that it upholds 16.8% of complaints.

Organisations tend to cling onto regulations and rules provided in the Data Protection Act 2018 creating obstructions to those who wish to prove that they are innocent. This is regrettable and avoidable – organisations that load markers should be more open to challenges.  For example, I am working on cases at the moment where false positives have been proven – a bank has incorrectly failed to verify valid documents leading to debanking.  Such mistakes are back office – unfortunately the business which loaded the markers has seen a similar mistake before and has clearly not learnt or assessed the risk that has been created.

Some basic bank accounts have been made available by major banks to those who have struggled with debt and poor credit ratings, for example people going through bankruptcy. However, few if any of them will onboard people who have fraud markers.

To highlight the problems that debanking can cause, I recently worked with the BBC alongside Sam Mapston. Two of my clients were interviewed.  One was completely unbanked, cast asunder at the tender age of 17 who six years later still cannot find a bank account.  His case was exacerbated by Synectics Solutions and National Hunter markers that lasted for 6 years, double the time Cifas loads for in such circumstances, and paying no regard to the Government’s own guidance regarding youth justice in accordance with to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.[27] The other explained her despair at being debanked and how tempted she had been to cross the line into criminality.  The films have been saved for posterity on the Financial Fraud Awareness Campaign’s website Media Coverage | FFAC.

The risks are therefore obvious – if people cannot get a bank account, they will have no option but to adopt nefarious means in order to survive.  Debanking does drive people underground into the black market.    

Thanks to the Financial Conduct Authority’s research we know that more than 1 million people in the UK are unbanked[28] – 1.6% of the adult population are in this position – some admittedly by choice, but equally many have found themselves at that point.

Educating people about the risks of debanking is important.  Do those tempted to use unregulated bookmakers and gambling sites understand the risks they are taking in relation to the potential for them to be debanked?  After all, they will struggle to argue that their winnings have not potentially been merged with criminal property.

Is a slackening of the recognised legitimate interest now justified?   Previously I was able to argue the balancing exercise for people who had made genuine mistakes, where the punishment of being debanked or even unbanked for six years with the associated devastation to their careers and livelihoods was out of proportion to the crime.  In those situations, reprieve meant that my clients who had demonstrably learnt from their mistakes were able to continue with their lives, making lawful contributions to HMRC and the wider economy.

Therefore, it is important that The National Economic Crime Centre and the Home Office incorporate the risk of affordability checks increasing black market gambling and debanking into its next National Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing and call for further research into these issues in the Economic Crime Areas of Research Interest.

[1] National_Risk_Assessment_of_Money_Laundering_and_Terrorist_Financing_2025_FINAL.pdf page 107

[2] Glacial progress, substantial problems and no evaluation – why there are huge concerns about the affordability checks pilot | Racing Post

[3] How ChatGPT and AI chatbots help punters to bypass affordability checks and bet on the black market | Racing Post

[4] Calls for affordability checks plans to be paused over concerns they will not be ‘frictionless’ | Racing Post

[5] Black Market Bookmakers Hold 9% of UK Gambling Market

[6] ‘It should ring alarm bells’ – illegal black market operators on track to overtake regulated firms for UK gambling spend, new research warns | Racing Post

[7] Hong Kong Jockey Club chief warns ‘ill-measured’ British affordability checks are causing pain for other racing jurisdictions | Racing Post

[8] Illegal online gambling: Disruption of illegal online gambling  – Summary of disruption activity

[9] The ‘Dutch disaster’: experts on over-regulation and black market

[10] ‘Why are you risking all of this?’ – racing’s enormous economic and social contribution to the UK | Racing Post

[11] William Hill and Ladbrokes Close Shops

[12] Racing’s crisis: 1 in 3 high-rollers turn to black market amid rising frustration for punters unable to bet with legal bookies | Racing Post

[13] What an £840,000 court case brought by a black-market bookie tells us about today’s dysfunctional betting landscape | Racing Post

[14] The case against affordability checks is now unanswerable | Racing Post

[15] National_Risk_Assessment_of_Money_Laundering_and_Terrorist_Financing_2025_FINAL.pdf pages 68 to 69

[16] Fraudscape 2026: Fraud cases hit record highs as criminals adapt and scale | Cifas

[17] Fraud Markers, Debanking and Financial Crime: A Legal Analysis of Counterfraud Practices in the UK and Beyond – ISBN 978-1-032-96205-4 Routledge

[18] Data (Use and Access) Act 2025

[19] Recognised legitimate interest | ICO

[20] Guidance on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the Exceptions Order 1975 – GOV.UK

[21] Financial Lives 2024 survey – Retail banking: Selected findings page 18

[22] Report claims authorities have ‘big questions’ to answer over ease of access to gambling black market | Racing Post