As part of a deal with the United States, US financial services firm Western Union Co. has agreed to pay a federal fine of $586 million (or €545.2 million) after admitting that it allowed the processing of online gaming transactions which turned out to be illegal. Simply put, it aided and allowed wire fraud and failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program.
Failure to exercis[...] Read more » Western Union to pay $586M fine due to processing illegal online gambling transactions
Joined: Dec '12
Location: New Zealand
Age: 33 (M)
Posts: 504
I wonder if 'money gram' is also being fined. it and western union are the two that scammers use in this country, although its not exactly a simple process and here I have never seen nor heard of anyone using this money transfer system and if they did id presume it was illegal. maybe in europe and asia its common to use for legit reasons?
Joined: May '09
Location: Croatia
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 20405
you cant hide anything from usa government and their laws!people who are working at tax department will find everything and every illegal move of money,especially for gambling,they will track!so wester union will pay this!
when in a country that prohibits online poker people are looking for opportunities to continue to play their favorite games .. and in this case I think the US government is not very true .. enters US promotes freedom, and people can not play your favorite games.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
A company like that, knowing all this for so long and not doing nothing... They should have done more against them. Not to mention that their fees are ridiculous. used their service once and never again.
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
can't say that i am shocked or actually even surprised by a tiny bit in hearing that western union was involved in money laundering activities or helping out to process illegal transfer... that's why they have been set up in the first place... ok ok maybe a bit harsh, but WU have always been a heaven for all kinds of fraudsters and it's an openly known secret.
Joined: Mar '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 7371
This has got to be one of the biggest fines i have ever read about and they cannot be too happy about it. $586,000,000 is an astronomical amount of money and lots of people will have questions to answer
Joined: Jan '17
Location: Lithuania
Age: 66 (M)
Posts: 1756
$586000000 is a lot of zeros this is amount of money that i can hardly imagine, so I wonder how much money must this company have to be able to pay thus fine and still continue business as normal. I didn't think that such fines can be possible at all, how is it calcucated I wonder?
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
If they were doing all these of transactions, dont you think that they might even have more earnings than the official papers show. under taxes etc? Even the fine being that big, they must have earned more than that. A big drawback at the moment.
Posted by carluimaca: Incredible that a company like WU has not validated data
They kinda did. But person to person transactions has no special liner notes sections where you could write up that this 5k is actually going to a drug lord/pimp/smuggler and when it comes to their employee hirings they could only x-ray to a certain amount of your backstory. They probably won't know right away that you aiding and embedding criminals if you don't have prior convictions or been busted on a drug test...
