U.S. Secret Service raids E-Gold currency exchanger
Declan McCullagh
declan at well.com
Fri Mar 30 17:10:59 PST 2001
Good question. I don't recall anymore; my article today linked to an
archived Wired story that went into this in more detail and I believe
linked to the appropriate regs. --Declan
At 05:51 PM 3/30/01 -0500, Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
>need a clarification: is it $5,000 for le and $10,000 or $25,000 for
>mandatory reporting to the irs? btw i do know banks will volunteer
>suspicious transactions, no matter how small, to the irs. i believe this is
>how a fed. treasury worker was caught...he thought depositing smaller
>amounts (<$9,000) would go unnoticed.
>
>this link to declan's article which raises my above question.
>http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,20498,00.html
>phillip
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-cypherpunks at Algebra.COM
>[mailto:owner-cypherpunks at Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh
>Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 2:21 PM
>To: cypherpunks at cyberpass.net; fight-censorship at vorlon.mit.edu
>Subject: U.S. Secret Service raids E-Gold currency exchanger
>
>
>
>
>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42745,00.html
>
> Secret Service Raids E-Gold
> by Declan McCullagh (declan at wired.com)
> 11:10 a.m. Mar. 30, 2001 PST
>
> WASHINGTON -- The Secret Service has raided a New York state business
> that exchanged dollars for grams of the digital currency called
> e-gold.
>
> A bevy of agents from the Secret Service, Postal Service and local
> police recently detained the owners of Gold-Age, based in Syracuse,
> and seized computers, files and documents from the fledgling firm.
>
> U.S. Attorney Daniel French said Friday that the investigation
> involved charges of credit card fraud. "We haven't brought charges
> yet," French said. "We're in the investigative phase."
>
> Gold-Age owner Parker Bradley says that during his eight-hour
> interrogation on March 12, the Secret Service seemed less interested
> in credit card fraud and more interested in the mechanics of e-gold.
> Until last year, Bradley accepted credit cards and paid out e-gold,
> but said he quit because too many people used stolen credit cards when
> conducting business with him.
>
> "The interrogation became less about me and more about politics and
> e-gold," Bradley said. "They were trying to get me to blame e-gold for
> fraud. Just to be blunt, these guys have no clue about how e-commerce
> works, how e-gold works or what I was doing."
>
> E-gold is a 5-year-old firm based on the Caribbean island of Nevis
> that provides an electronic currency backed by physical metal stored
> in vaults in London and Dubai. The company says it has 181,000 user
> accounts and stores about 1.4 metric tons of gold on behalf of its
> customers.
>
> Bradley's Gold-Age company, which he ran with his wife out of their
> home until the raid, was one of about a dozen e-gold currency exchange
> services: He took dollars and credited grams of gold, silver, platinum
> and palladium to a customer's account, less a modest fee.
>
> [...]
>
> Still unclear is why the raid took place. French indicated that it
> could be more than a routine credit card investigation, saying "at
> this point, it's being investigated as a credit card fraud."
>
> One possibility is a broader investigation directed at some users of
> e-gold, which is less anonymous than cash but more anonymous than
> credit cards. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has warned of
> malcontents using the Net and encryption to dodge taxes, and it's
> possible that the feds don't exactly approve of a system that's more
> privacy-protective than the heavily regulated banking system.
>
> Current federal regulations require banks and credit unions -- about
> 19,000 in all -- to inform federal law enforcement of all transactions
> $5,000 and above that have no "apparent lawful purpose or are not the
> sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to
> engage."
>
> Because e-gold is not a bank that lends money -- it's more akin to a
> warehouse that stores gold on behalf of its customers -- it's not
> covered by those rules.
>
> Mike Godwin said the raid evokes memories of the notorious Steve
> Jackson Games raid by the Secret Service a decade ago, which led to
> the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
>
> [...]
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