7 People Arrested for Online Credit Processing

[illini43]

Apparently 7 people have been arrested in connection with helping online gambling sites conduct transactions with US credit cards.

Anyone know if this affects the current processors the online sites use? If this thread needs to be moved, mods feel free to do so.

Link to story

[Dire]

Hard to read that article. They seem to imply that these were the people that were handling western union transfers, but also imply that they were defrauding credit card companies somehow? I don't really get it.

One thing I do get is that they're each facing up to 72 years in prison for doing nothing besides helping US citizens deposit their money to gambling sites they wanted to deposit their money to. What's happened to this country?

[dibbs]

Pretty damn bad news.

[Genesis]

Read to me as though they were responsible for processing credit card transactions for/through gambling sites but masking the purchase as something else.

[soulvamp]

Is this how UB and Absolute were able to process standard-issue cc's?

[Coy_Roy]

I hate to be an alarmist but this could possibly push a poker site teetering one way or the other to finally pull the plug on the US.

[LeapFrog]

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I hate to be an alarmist but this could possibly push a poker site teetering one way or the other to finally pull the plug on the US.

[/ QUOTE ]

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The defendants are charged with Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy, bank fraud, violations of the wire-wager act, and money laundering. The indictment seeks the forfeiture of $150 million, as well as real estate and vehicles.


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What we need to be asking:

Are these arrests in any way related to poker? Do any of the charges stem from transfer of $ to poker sites?

[soulvamp]

It is illegal to do that, I believe, no matter if it's a gambling site or a toy store or whatever. For instance, if I sold books but didn't have a cc merchant account but you had one, it would not be legal for you to process cc transactions for me, I think.

[dragonystic]

i dunno if this is related, but all of a sudden i cant use my cc's to deposit onto wpex. which ive used 3 or 4 times in the past, and as recently as a month ago.

[2461Badugi]

The mention of BetUS as one of the companies under indictment leads me to think it's just continued action on that snafu, rather than something new.