The Gambling Commission has raised the casino sector’s overall terrorist-financing risk to medium in its 2026 assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing in Britain’s gambling industry. It kept remote casinos at high risk for money laundering, lifted gambling software to medium and warned that illegal markets, artificial intelligence and cryptoassets are making the threat more complex.
According to the Commission, the assessment was published on 30 July as an update to the 2023 report and takes account of HM Treasury and the Home Office’s National Risk Assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing 2025. It covers all licensed remote and non-remote gambling activity in Great Britain and is meant to help operators update their own risk assessments.
The Commission said the risk landscape for licensed operators continues to evolve. It described the threat as “diverse, complex and rapidly evolving”, and said fast-moving AI capabilities are testing customer due diligence controls, while high-velocity digital payment systems involving cryptoassets are adding further pressure.
It also said fake identities generated by AI and altered identification documents make sophisticated transaction structuring harder to detect. Illegal gambling websites can generate criminal proceeds and can also be used to launder them, while payment service providers remain the first regulated financial link through which funds from illegal gambling are filtered into the legitimate financial system.
For the casino sector, the National Risk Assessment still rates terrorist financing as low. The Commission, however, elevates the sector’s overarching rating to medium because its own framework also weighs the severe impact of a potential event. It said the change reflects shifts in customer, geographical and transaction risks since 2020, including more funds moving through remote casinos, new ways to play casino games, a revised view of money service business activity and a greater presence of illegal casinos targeting British consumers.
Remote casinos remained high risk for money laundering. The guidance points to the difficulty of verifying customers who are not physically present, the scope for fraudulent documents to bypass controls and the risk of mule accounts. The Commission said it had seen an increase in attempts to defeat customer due diligence checks using false documentation, deepfake videos and AI-generated face swaps.
The remote casino section also highlights the sector’s scale. Gross gambling yield was £5.0 billion in the year from April 2024 to March 2025, and £4.2 billion of that came from slot games. The Commission said higher return-to-player products can be exploited for money laundering, and that peer-to-peer activity in poker carries higher money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk because it can facilitate exchanges of criminal funds between customers.
Case studies in the report show the kinds of behaviour operators are being asked to detect. One customer deposited about £40,000 over six months while creating accounts in the details of five different people. Another blocked account was able to pass sign-up checks again because the operator did not spot small discrepancies in customer data fields.
Further examples involved suspected mule activity among students, an 18-year-old thought to be gambling on behalf of third parties, and a customer whose large pre-paid card deposits and withdrawals to different bank accounts raised suspicion after minimal wagering. The Commission said such patterns can point to attempts to move large sums while disguising their source.
A summary by SCCG said the report also rated poker as high risk for money laundering in both remote and non-remote settings, and that gambling software was moved from low to medium risk. The same summary said the report flagged insufficient scrutiny of white-label partnerships and the rise of illegal crypto casinos.
HM Government has allocated £26 million over three years to the Commission to intensify disruption of illegal gambling markets. The Commission said a compliant, mature and resilient regulated industry remains a critical baseline defence against the vulnerabilities identified by the Financial Action Task Force.
