Using a fake online store obviously is a technique of startle to money laundering

ByHamza Butt

A Reuters survey reveals that a network of fake online stores pretending to provide household goods in London has been used as a window for Internet gaming payment.

Exclusive: Fake online stores reveal gamblers' shadow banking system | Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-gambling-usa-dummies-exclusive-idUKKBN19D137

Seven sites dealing with fabrics, DVD cases, maps, gift packaging, machine tapes, pin badges, etc. which are operated in Europe are fake sites which do not deal with products in fact, and many countries and parts of the United States It is clear that it functions as part of a system to hide Internet gaming payments that are considered illegal in the state. The amount of money handled is said to be 40 billion dollars (about 4 trillion 46 million yen).

The existence of these fake online stores became clear from sentences anonymously posted on the Internet. In December 2016 one of these sites "My Fabric FactoryA Reuters reporter orders one item on the above. However, it seems that the ordered goods never arrived, after a while the e-mail "out of stock of products" arrived from the handling source, payment was canceled.

"My Fabric Factory" which is one of fake online stores

My Fabric Factory


As for this, Reuters' reporter inquired with a direct call to the help desk of My Fabric Factory,Settlement agentAnna Richardson, who works at Agora Online Services, said he got into the phone. Mr. Richardson said "Over the phone" (Mr. Richardson works) Agora is doing business to handle payment of poker, that customer is hundreds of online gambling sites "" What type of Internet gaming site Even if you are using it, in most cases it will be processed under us (Agora) "and so on, it turns out that the online store is used for different purposes than the original purpose.

Also, Reuters seems to have ordered items on six other sites as well, but it seems that all the payments have been canceled, no matter what order you order. These sites also used the mail server "agrsupport.net" whose domain name is one of Agora's owned domains. Reuters seems to have succeeded in contacting three employees working at Agora by continuing the investigation, one of them said, "Most of the gambling people are Americans, but in the United States it is illegal, so our The base is in Germany. "

ByHamza Butt

Credit card companies, such as VISA and MasterCard, encode each seller's categories to see what type of purchase processing was done so that you can identify transactions that are deemed illegal in a particular country going. For example, the code "7995" is given for gambling transactions, and purchase processing with this code tends to be subject to strict investigation.

The network discovered by Reuters has been searching for investigations by credit card companies such as VISA and MasterCard by treating Internet gaming transactions as "other purchase processing" rather than gambling. Deutsche Payment of Germany is responsible for settlement agency of seven fake online stores, and the company is accredited by the PCI Security Standards Council which is a global payment card security organization. It is also included in the agency list approved in May 2017 from European VISA.

Dan Fletchering, product manager for "G2 Web Services", a financial compliance company that works with banks and credit card companies, said, "Transaction laundering is a serious misbehavior and is often a crime" "This violates the agreement between the purchaser and the merchant, which will also allow banned goods and services to enter the payment system.In addition, to defy the anti-money laundering law I am strongly criticizing it. "

ByKeith Cooper

Reuters believes that fraud and fraud experts have led to supporting trading of games, pornography, drugs, etc. in areas where online commerce is rated as "highly dangerous". Some experts point out that thousands of online merchants are using the same technology to scoop out credit card company investigations.

"This is a digital evolution in money laundering and it is much easier to understand than the previous method," said Ron Taycher, CEO of cyber intelligence company Evercompliant, in cooperation with banks to identify suspicious sites. It is much more difficult to catch with. "

According to experts, it seems that such a fake online store is made difficult for general users to find, and it is very rare for ordinary users to engage in transactions. It seems that seven fake online stores are no longer accepting payment.