7 People Arrested for Online Credit Processing

[StellarWind]

Forbes magazine did a feature story a few months back about a similar non-gaming prosecution.

Many of you may have seen a TV ad campaign involving a dork named "Bob" who has a permanent ridiculous smile because he used a bogus "male enhancement" product called Enzyte produced by Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals.

The Feds went after BPN and its owner and the Governemnt didn't bother trying to prove the product was a crock. Seems the chargeback rates on their credit card sales were very high and their banks tried to terminate their merchant accounts for business reasons. BPN resorted to a variety of schemes to keep credit card sales flowing by deceiving the banks about who they were and what they were selling.

That's fraud and now they are in big trouble even though no one is claiming in court that their product or advertising is illegal. If the underlying product or service is illegal that would just make things worse.

Banks have a right to say they don't want to extend credit to fund online poker. Poker players should be free to play but equally bankers should have the freedom to not risk their money on it. The guys running these fraudulent credit card processing schemes are simply criminals who are inflicting real losses on the financial industry. I don't have any problem with the Government prosecuting them and I would hope that the online poker industry wouldn't be involved.

[MiltonFriedman]

Thank GOD someone prosecuted the source of those f**king Enzyte ads.

[MiltonFriedman]

BetUS is primarily a sports operation, although they run some poker.

This also is interesting, because for years Party reportedly engaged in uncoded processing of deposits. Wonder if they are a likely target ?

[Freyalise]

Most online poker sites still use the correct merchant code for online gaming transactions, and most US banks still process these transactions without any problem.

No real idea why anyone would bother miscoding their transactions.

[MiltonFriedman]

"Falsifying credit card statements to facilitate LEGAL transactions is a crime, but a pretty minor one"

Skil, while I agree with your review of prosecutorial tactics here, and think it is clearly tied to sports in this case, where is "bank fraud" a 'pretty minor" crime ?

It sounds likely to be a federal felony AND a predicate offense under RICO. Can you post a link to the indictment ?

[MiltonFriedman]

How nice are your jails ?

[Skallagrim]

Milton, "pretty minor" is a term of art to us criminal defense lawyers [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] . If these folks were merely falsifying codes for otherwise legal transactions (the story seems to imply more), then they are not likely to do more than pay a fine and be on probation - at worst less than a year in jail.

If the transactions were illegal ones: huge fines and years in prison.

Skallagrim

[Bigflopdaddy]

BETUS is part of Sportsbook.com and that whole group.
They all were taking credit and debit cards and I recall much discussion of how good there processors were.
Not that you can get your money out quick anyway or if at all but I would be geting out of those places now.
I might even be a little concerend about the poker network.

[questions]

Do players have any liability? That is, if you deposited to a site using a credit card and the processor used one of these methods, have you (in the eyes of the DOJ) done anything illegal (aside from playing online poker)?

[Skallagrim]

[ QUOTE ]
Do players have any liability? That is, if you deposited to a site using a credit card and the processor used one of these methods, have you (in the eyes of the DOJ) done anything illegal (aside from playing online poker)?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.