William Hill Staff Call Police on Customer Cashing in a Winner

William Hill staff have been videoed calling the police to intimidate a customer who was trying to collect £12,500 in winnings.

The high street bookmaking giant generally has a rock-solid reputation but stories such as this going public certainly won’t do them any good.

Check out the short video below to see the William Hill customer bullied into leaving without his winnings.

The punter, named Michael, put a bet of £2,400 on three choices; a couple of tennis matches and a football game. The stake money was taken without any issue, nor any identity checks.

Remember this when considering that William Hill was fined £19.2 million at the beginning of the year for widespread social responsibility failures. This was serious enough for the UK regulator to seriously consider suspending its license.

Michael’s story became a nightmare that involved four different William Hill outlets, the police being called twice, and an attempted investigation into his personal finances.

There was even contact with his Member of Parliament and The Daily Mail.

After the nice win, everything started off swimmingly well. A visit to the first shop saw £5,500 paid out, the largest of the three wins, and a promise the rest would be paid later as they didn’t have that cash in the store at the time.

Michael was happy with the interaction and generously left the staff a £110 tip.

Upon arriving at a second outlet, Michael was told they wouldn't pay him in cash and he claimed the staff member was rude and aggressive to him. When he asked for the customer service number, the staff member threatened him with the police who were eventually called.

Michael says he was the victim of humiliation tactics when the staff member pressed the emergency button.

When the police arrived, Michael explained that under anti-money laundering regulations, if he paid for the bet in cash then the bookmaker must pay out any winnings in cash.

The staff member had refused to pay Michael cash, although he did offer to arrange a payment to a UK bank account. As he didn’t have one, only cash would do, as he explained to the two police officers.

Caan Berry explains in the video above that the reason William Hill didn’t want to pay out a large amount in cash was because they wanted his personal details in order to later assess if they wanted to refuse his custom. A sneaky tactic.

When the police realised they were not needed and were about to leave, the staff gave Michael the customer service number. He was then told to return to the shop where he placed the bets to collect his winnings.

All sounded well, until he arrived when the nightmare unfolded into more harassment.

Now, the staff were saying they needed all of his personal details before they could pay out. Something to do with regulatory compliance — or so they said.

This was just another tactic to learn the identity of a man who had won a large sum from them.

Incredibly, when Michael refused to give his details, as is his right, the staff phoned the police. One of the officers then spoke to head office and Michael was once again instructed to hand over his personal details.

At a complete loss for anything else he could do, Michael relented and sent off his details, contacting The Daily Mail and his local MP at the same time. 23 days later, after an article on the story was published in many media outlets, he was told to go to a completely different store to collect his winnings.