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Secret Service Raids Gold-Age

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the real-world-meets-cyberpunk-fantasies dept.

Wired has a story about the Secret Service raiding one of the several firms that promise to exchange your old-fashioned greenbacks for even more old-fashioned gold - the idea being that E-gold is a better medium of exchange than those boring currencies backed by national governments. Unfortunately it seems that the primary use of e-gold seems to be turning stolen credit cards into cold, hard, ca.... errr, gold. (Update: 03/30 5:19 PM by michael : The headline has been changed to make it clear that the raided company is a company distinct from E-gold. The business relationship between the two companies is not entirely clear.)

14 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Crap!! by bjorky · · Score: 5

    Does that mean my e-pyrite is worthless too?

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    "Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
  2. What a load of crap by blazin · · Score: 5

    The secret service should have to reimburse E-gold based on the average days' worth of business for each day that they had the equipment that kept the business from running.

    1. Re:What a load of crap by e-gold · · Score: 5

      Oh gods. What a day/week to be slashdotted (finally). Also, I wish that wired and /. headline writers respectively would either read the actual story they're referring to, or share their drug stashes with everyone else. *sigh*

      Ok, I'll start with my standard offer of a small spend to any slashdotter interested in creating an e-gold account & sending me the number (goodbye promotional account balance!). I'll also try to answer any questions sent to me (but please poke around on the site and find out about us first, the concept of grams as money can be a bit strange but it's fun to discover). Alright...

      So far, law enforcement AFAIK (and I'd know....) has not contacted either e-gold or OmniPay regarding this case. I am in touch with Parker, and he has set up an e-gold account with a publicly viewable balance at: http://www.e-gold.com/pub-bal.asp?pubid=280478

      I doubt the SS will do anything like what you say, the experience of my friend, the artist J.S.G. Boggs (who is the yin to e-gold's yang, IMO) speaks to that, although Parker's isn't a counterfeiting case (and neither was that one IMO). Both are political. It's sad, frankly.
      JMR

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      Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
  3. this isn't e-gold's fault by perdida · · Score: 5

    The same government that is slavering over the lucrative uses of e-currency doesn't like it when an old technology such as credit cards comes into contact with electronic currency creates crime.

    Well, fuck them. Go develop a more secure credit card system.

    Or get rid of credit cards all together.

    As I think about it, yes, please, do! The cred card has been one of the most abusable, fraud-prone forms of transaction since its inception. it creates lots of ways of creating debt that wouldn't otherwiose be there by encouraging people to spend money they don't have at exorbitant interest rates.

    I do not have a single credit card. Contrary to popular opinion it has never stopped me from renting a car or getting a hotel room. I do have a credit history, too, if I need REAL credit like the kind for buying a house or other major investments.

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    Goat sex free since 2001
  4. Secret Service by Speare · · Score: 5

    Before people ask, "why are the US President's bodyguards involved here?"

    The Secret Service are a branch of the US Department of the Treasury.

    A Secret Service FAQ: The Secret Service has primary jurisdiction to investigate threats against Secret Service protectees; counterfeiting of U.S. currency or other U.S. Government obligations; forgery or theft of U.S. Treasury checks, bonds or other securities; credit card fraud; telecommunications fraud; computer fraud; identify fraud; and certain other crimes affecting federally insured financial institutions.

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  5. Re:Secret Service - in a RAID? by Speare · · Score: 4

    http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/

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  6. The Company in question... by Cranston+Snord · · Score: 5

    The company in question is GoldAge, not e-Gold...if you take a look at the site, it does beg the question of legitimacy... http://www.gold-age.net/ga-post-index.html

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  7. bullies by deran9ed · · Score: 5

    Its no surprise the Secret Service has Gone too far, but what I see happening is, they may be concerned with persons, embezzling money than using companies such as e-gold, as a means of hiding their traces.

    Regardless of what the company actuall does, for those who don't keep up on privacy issues I suggest you read up on James Bell and how his "Assassination Politics" paper landed him in jail for using the same kind of anonymouse untraceable methods in theory...

    As for the Secret Service using "credit card" fraud as an excuse, how come they never raid the businesses of adult sites all over the Internet? Or Amazon when someone cards them? Shady tacticts...

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    360 degrees of Karma
  8. How rational is this? by zpengo · · Score: 4
    People are trading credit card numbers not for gold, but for an electronic (i.e., imaginary) statement that their money went toward gold somewhere in the world? It's an absurd notion. Why trade something tenuous (a credit card number) for something even more tenuous (electronic gold)?

    The world is becoming disturbingly postmodern. In the beginning there was bartering. Then people started using precious metals to represent the value of objects. Then they started using pieces of paper to represent the metals. Then they started using plastic cards to represent pieces of paper. Now they're trading that in for a number in a database.

    Makes my head hurt.

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    1. Re:How rational is this? by pug23 · · Score: 4

      The world is becoming disturbingly postmodern. In the beginning there was bartering. Then people started using precious metals to represent the value of objects. Then they started using pieces of paper to represent the metals. Then they started using plastic cards to represent pieces of paper. Now they're trading that in for a number in a database.

      You say this as if it were something now. If you have a bank account, your money has been nothing more than a number in a database for tens of years.

    2. Re:How rational is this? by servasius_jr · · Score: 5
      The world is becoming disturbingly postmodern. In the beginning there was bartering. Then people started using precious metals to represent the value of objects. Then they started using pieces of paper to represent the metals. Then they started using plastic cards to represent pieces of paper. Now they're trading that in for a number in a database.

      Currency is pretty useful stuff, though. When you come down to it, wealth is based on production. If you have wealth, it's probably based on something valuable you've produced, whether that's a good, or a service, or whatever. If you're bartering, you're trading whatever you produce, sheep or legal advice or whatever, for what you need, groceries for example. Obviously this isn't very graceful. Any other medium of exchange is simply something representing your power of production, in order to make getting what you need easier. (e.g., you don't have to find a grocer who happens to need legal advice or a sheep, and you don't have to get a whole sheep's worth of groceries at once.) So if the whole point is making things easier, why not use the medium of exchange thats the most flexible? Saying a shiny rock represents something valuable is, in the end, no more rational than saying a string of numbers represents something valuable. If the string of numbers works better, use it.

  9. Seizure by Uruk · · Score: 4

    Does it bother anybody else that the article clearly states that they've raided this guys place and taken all of his stuff, and then follows it up with "We haven't yet filed any charges"?

    Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?"

    I'll freely admit I don't know the details of the case, but even totally guilty felons have constitutional rights.

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    -- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
  10. owning gold in the US is now legal by phr1 · · Score: 4

    It was illegal in the US to own gold bullion from 1933 til 1974. So it's not completely an urban legend. But you're free to buy gold in the US now. Typing keywords like "legal gold bullion 1933 roosevelt nixon" into Google will find you a lot of references.

  11. Re:The facts of the US economic scam by Zeinfeld · · Score: 5
    Fact: Gold has about the same approximate buying power today as it did 100 years ago. US currency has approximatelybi 1/100th the buying power today as it did 100 years ago.

    Not true actually, an once of gold used to buy a hand made suit, today it buys about a quarter of one.

    Moreover the value of a dollar invested in an account paying 6% interest a year would be worth 3.4 times the buying power of a 1900 dollar.

    Interest rates rarely fail to keep up with inflation over the long run.

    Gold plays a very much reduced role in the world economy since Nixon abandoned the gold standard in the 1970s.

    Fact: The current monetary system is illegal according to the US constitution

    Fact: there are a lot of wierd loonies arround talking utter drivel.

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