Western Union Blocking Money Transfers to Arabs

lowrydr310 writes "Western Union is blocking money transfers to people with Arab names. They have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed. 'In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed.' Western union claims they are merely following U.S. Treasury Department guidelines that scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. I agree that Western Union shouldn't allow anyone supporting terrorism to use their service, however I'm fairly certain there are millions of people named Mohammed or Ahmed who aren't terrorists. I wonder if any other financial companies such as banks are doing the same thing."

Comments

Mohammed eh?

[lecithin]

"Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed"

Not true. They prevented him from sending the cash because his name was Sahir Mohammed. A bit of a difference.

Perhaps a Sahir Mohammed has some links to 'bad guys'?

Well, it happens here in the US too. There are plenty of stories regading people being put on the 'do not fly' list due to circumstances like this as well.

The world's most common name

[Kelson]

The statistics may have changed, but I remember one of those trick/trivia questions from when I was younger (in the 1980s): What's the most common name in the world?

It turned out it was, if you include all the variations, Mohammed. Throw in Mahmet, Makhmoud, Mahmoud, and various other spellings and transliterations.

Somehow, I doubt a large enough percentage of them are liekly to be terrorists for the name to be worth checking.