Money safe in US banks?

[Emperor]

“The FBI has frozen funds held in customer accounts at Citibank, subsidiary of Citigroup , as part of its case against the firm's CEO and Chairman Chuck Prince, and CFO Sallie Crawcheck, who were yesterday arrested and charged with racketeering and money laundering.

Citibank refused to disclose how much had been frozen but company filings make clear huge sums were flowing between illegal offshore gambling websites and its US customers' accounts. Citibank reported income of ~$25Billion last year.
Citibank said in a statement, "The funds of US resident customers are fully secure and will be available for withdrawal by customers when released by the Department of Justice.

Advice on the Citibank website makes clear customer withdrawals have now been blocked. "As a top priority, we are working to resolve all withdrawal issues but in the meantime we continue to maintain these funds in trust on your behalf," customers are told. "Please check this page regularly for more updates."

The US Congress passed tough anti-gambling laws last October but financial institutions have lobbied against anymore account policing by the industry. Post 9/11, banks managers are saddled with the responsibility to flag accounts for the IRS, Homeland Security via the Patriot Act, and now the Department of Justice via the UIGEA.
In civil protest to the new legislation, many banks have accepted checks routed from illegal offshore gambling sites, and allowed credit and debit card transactions. Following the arrests of CEO and Chairman Chuck Prince, and CFO Sallie Crawcheck, who face up to 20 years in jail if convicted, the decision was quickly taken to shut down Citibank operations. Trading in the company's shares was also suspended and remains so. The DOW plunged 272 points on the news, with fears that more arrests in the industry would follow in days to come.

It is unclear whether the FBI will treat some or all of the funds as proceeds of illegal gambling. One US newspaper report cited Neil Donovan, an FBI agent, saying the funds were being held in court as potential evidence. Some money may be returned to Citibank customers but no timescale was forthcoming, the report said. A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice last night refused to confirm details in the report, as did Citibank."

Fiction - Definitely

Prophetic- Who knows...

Sorry for pulling a War of the Worlds, or gaboonviper, or whater, but the founders of Neteller haven't facilitated these illegal transactions any differently than every US bank that has cashed a Pokerstars check.

US bankers should be up in arms over all this.

[Niediam]

Laugh. I thought this was real at first and had me going 'WTF?' quite a few times. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[KAT21]

The sad thing is that this doesn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility.

[tangled]

I owe you an acute MI.