New Developments With NETeller & The DOJ
Ouch! About two weeks ago I wrote a post about how it is still possible and easy for US gamblers to bet online using a variety of methods. In that post I listed NETeller as one of the possible options. Well….today NETeller issued a notice that it is no longer accepting any US player accounts, or more accurately:
” …it is ceasing to handle gambling transactions from U.S. customers because of restrictive legislation and uncertainties about regulations.”
Which is not really any surprise today(Thursday) because only three days ago(Monday) two former directors and founding shareholders of NETeller Plc, a British online money transfer company, were charged in the United States with laundering billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds. In 2005, NETeller processed more than 7 billion dollars of transactions and more than 95 % of the transfers were Internet gambling companies. Like I said before…Ouch!
Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, both Canadians were arrested on Monday. The arrests allege that the payment processing was collecting funds from US gamblers and depositing it in banks outside the US.
They were former execs with NETeller and both had stepped down at different times last year. Both men may have suspected these type of problems as far back as 2004 when they went public. U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia states that at that time, they “conceded that they were risking prosecution by the government of the United States under existing or future federal laws.”
This brings up a big problem and also some big questions regarding online gambling and digital gold currency. If some Joe Public in the heartland of America buys a $1000 worth of e-gold and visits TheGoldCasino are any of those big laws being broken?
How could anyone prohibit such a transaction….(1)Block the DGC, (2)Block the client, (3)Block the exchange agent? (4)Block the casino? All of these options seem a bit crazy to me. I don’t know how that could be done under existing law or I should say the lack of any existing law to handle this type of transaction(s).
NETeller is a 100% British company and located in the Isles. GoldMoney is also headquartered in the Isles. E-gold is a Nevis company with servers in the US, are they breaking the law maintaining an operation that permits offshore payments to casinos, sportsbooks, lottos and the assorted gaming operations?
Will they soon ban US customers? Or worse–all gambling merchants? You can’t attack payment systems like NETeller and NOT attack DGCs? Its six of one half dozen of the other.
This is a big question because all of the digital gold currency operations are accepted at offshore casino operations. By accepting US client funds and allowing them to be spent in offshore gambling establishments are all of the DGCs in the same boat as NETeller?
