Online gambling "could" be used to launder money, Let's review this...

[TheEngineer]

[ QUOTE ]
i dont want to prohibit anything. i dont think the governments should be tracking our money.

how much does someone on a pokersite fraud team make a year? <50k? i have no idea, but im sure its <$100k even at a large site. when you have someone making so little compared to the money they are controlling, someone will be taking advantage.

there would be no smoke at all, because the site would never let anything get out for fear of getting invesitgated or losing business. im sure major sites have caught employees looking at holecards and trying to profit from it. again you would never hear anything about it. because even the best possible story (we caught the guy, returned monies, and sent him to prison) is very bad news for them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, your comments are speculation. In fact, that's why congressmen keep listing this as a concern. We really have no way to disprove a negative, but the fact is that these sites, unlike pizza parlors, eBay, EF Hutton, and exotic car dealerships, have not been shown to have facilitated laundering of ill-gotten gains. Simple as that.

[MiltonFriedman]

"im sure major sites have caught employees looking at holecards and trying to profit from it. again you would never hear anything about it. "

1. Planet poker had their rng cracked and fessed up

2A. Popular Poker. The software developers reportedly put in a back door for this purpose.

2B I believe that the Manager of Popular Poker was subsequently reviewed by the Nevada Gaming Commission for a position as a GM for a hotel casino. ..... He reportedly was deemed suitable, so long as he divested himself of his interest in the online site.

There should be threads on this.

[AzDesertRat]

There has been no confirmed proof---they are just allegations used as scare tactics in an attempt to move the legislation forward. Fear is a bigger motivator than love or hate.

[MiltonFriedman]

Both of what I discuss were admitted by the operators themselves.....

The point is that is ignorant to state that no site would fess up to cheating by employees or contractors or RNG flaws.

The secondary point is that the Nevada gaming authorities also passed on the suitability of the manager of one of these sites to later become GM for a HotelCasino in Las Vegas.

[AzDesertRat]

I have dealt with fraud and it is a legitimate concern with so much cash flowing through these operators. Internal controls have to be set up to prevent such incidents.

Am I saying that the thread of money laundering will be gone? Of course not--all I am saying is any that does happen, because it will, will be negligible. It is a similar to how banks are set up--they don't prevent all money laundering, but they can look for triggers that suggest it when it becomes a certain size.

ftr, it is easy to launder money using the current system without getting caught too--most people are either too stupid or unaware on what to look for, however

[Grasshopp3r]

Money laundering at a poker site is ineffective as every transaction is recorded. True money laundering is cash based and can not be traced to anyone.

[BluffTHIS!]

Milton,

I agree 100% with you that this argument is bogus and a red herring. But only insofar as they connect money laundering with terrorism or other crime, as there is some not just potential, but likelihood of small time *tax evasion*, not laundering, which I think they also mean.

grasshopper above said:

"Money laundering at a poker site is ineffective as every transaction is recorded. True money laundering is cash based and can not be traced to anyone."

But that really isn't true. It is not only whether a transaction produces a paper trail, but also whether that paper trail can be had by the gov't. Which it can't in many cases where they lack the means to coerce the owners of privately held foreign based sites.

But what is also an important factor here is the scale of *potential* money laundering. The simple fact is that for very big sums, one is indeed going to have to use US banks and generate a findable trail. While there might be posters here who make much more modest sums and got it to the B&M world via the neteller ATM card with the assumption (wrong now we know) that it could never be traced, those sums for any one person, or even in aggregate are fairly small, and again that is tax evasion and not strictly money laundering.

Furthermore what those bogus arguments don't take account of, is that even if getting say 10 or 20K to a terrorist or criminal is worthwhile from the perspective of those persons, then with the policies that the sites have in place, they simply can't transfer through them, but instead will be required to play/wager a substantial amount. And to prove that all one has to do is read the zoo and the crybaby threads from the chip dumpers who have had their accounts frozen.

The image of the terrorist depositing money from abroad into a poker or even sports betting account, and wagering X amount to be able to just cash out the rest if there is any, is just ludicrous. They would be better off robbing a convenient store to get their funding.

[AzDesertRat]

[ QUOTE ]
Money laundering at a poker site is ineffective as every transaction is recorded. True money laundering is cash based and can not be traced to anyone.

[/ QUOTE ]

While that is true, running money through one account and creating fictitious accounts to "clean" the money is an effective way of getting around it. You can do this internationally too. Each account could be tied into different bank accounts which could also be closed after the transaction is done.

That being said, it is not that easy to do on a large scale. It would be much easier at a B&M casino. The money laundering charge is just a scare tactic. I would ask for REAL proof from the FBI not hearsay from someone with an agenda.

[Legislurker]

The big problem is that it sounds plausible to the uninformed and uncaring, which is most voters. They don't have to back the accusation up with facts because no other Congressman or major news outlet woudl risk the egg on their face to call them outright liars(which they are). Its just an awesome soundbyte that we have to deal with.

[Flacks]

It will be interesting to see how quickly the money laundering issue disappears one the US casinos get their sites made legal and up and running.