Joking About Giving Money To ISIS Can Cost You Money (arstechnica.com)

Reader rudy_wayne writes: A person who was using Venmo, an app that allows people to send money to each other via their phones, sent $42 to repay a friend, and jokingly labelled it "ISIS Beer Fund". He immediately got an e-mail from Venmo questioning the purpose of the money. Although he tried to explain "The $42 was payment to a dear friend for two pitchers of Samuel Adams Boston Lager" he was informed "Due to OFAC regulations, we are not allowed to give the funds back to you or issue a refund." The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control is a 54-year-old institution, quietly working to keep money out of the hands of America's enemies.From the report, "It turns out -- shockingly -- this isn't the first time someone's Venmo transaction was cut off at the knees with a reference to subjects that are a matter of national security. Venmo won't explicitly say what words will trigger blockage, Gawker pointed out in October.

Comments

Same as drugs

[thinkwaitfast]

I once transferred money from my savings to checking account and wrote 'supplies for meth production' in the optional for section and it was rejected.

Re:WTF?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Think of it this way. An idiot marks a payment as "ISIS Beer Fund". There are only 2 possibilities:

1). It really is money for an ISIS beer fund. If the payment is allowed to go through, ISIS gets to laugh at the bureaucracy and keep the money. In short it's fodder for yet another internet video from our terroristic 'friends' and a black eye for the government;

2). It's a bad joke and not ISIS beer money. Yet if the transaction is allowed to go through, Won't You Think Of The Children types (as well as umpteen Fox talking heads) can get all exercised about how it 'might' have been terrorists. If the transaction is stopped and goes public, then everyone blames the citizen doing it for being an idiot

Or, the third of your "two" possibilities is that the guy simply wants to buy some Isis beer.

Re:Is Venmo international?

[radish]

Why does Venmo think that they are the enforcers? Why are they reading customers' note-to-self?

Because they would be shut down if they didn't. The law requires companies enabling money transfers to know who is transferring money to who, and to look for certain suspect transactions and report/block them. Don't blame Venmo, blame the government.