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Western Union Pays $586M Fine Over Wire Fraud Charges (reuters.com)
The head of the FTC says Western Union "facilitated scammers and rip-offs," while the company "looked the other way." An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
The world's biggest money-transfer company agreed to pay $586 million and admitted to turning a blind eye as criminals used its service for money laundering and fraud, U.S. authorities said on Thursday. Western Union, which has over half a million locations in more than 200 countries, admitted "to aiding and abetting wire fraud" by allowing scammers to process transactions, even when the company realized its agents were helping scammers avoid detection, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission said in statements...
Fraudsters offering fake prizes and job opportunities swindled tens of thousands of U.S. consumers, giving Western Union agents a cut in return for processing the payments, authorities said. Between 2004 and 2012, the Colorado-based company knew of fraudulent transactions but failed to take steps that would have resulted in disciplining of 2,000 agents, authorities said... Between 2004 and 2015 Western Union collected 550,928 complaints about fraud, with 80 percent of them coming from the United States where it has some 50,000 locations, the government complaint said. The average consumer complaint was for $1,148, the government said.
Reuters seemed to suggest that nearly one out of every thousand transactions was fraudulent, reporting that Western Union "said consumer fraud accounts for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of consumer-to-consumer transactions."
Fraudsters offering fake prizes and job opportunities swindled tens of thousands of U.S. consumers, giving Western Union agents a cut in return for processing the payments, authorities said. Between 2004 and 2012, the Colorado-based company knew of fraudulent transactions but failed to take steps that would have resulted in disciplining of 2,000 agents, authorities said... Between 2004 and 2015 Western Union collected 550,928 complaints about fraud, with 80 percent of them coming from the United States where it has some 50,000 locations, the government complaint said. The average consumer complaint was for $1,148, the government said.
Reuters seemed to suggest that nearly one out of every thousand transactions was fraudulent, reporting that Western Union "said consumer fraud accounts for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of consumer-to-consumer transactions."
Western Union has turned a blind eye to criminals using their services for fraud for decades. Why did this take so long?
Pay a fine, get off free?
Hope they follow-up in parallel with a criminal case.
This may do the trick
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Matter of fact, back during the GWB administration, my local supermarket had a WU advertising poster offering a discount rate on money transfers to Nigeria. Now we don't have any unusual concentration of Nigerian immigrants here -- most of the money transfers go to Mexico -- so the only visible motivation for this offer was to cash in on the Nigerian scam.
And knowing the intelligence level of the target market, the poster added that WU would give the customer less than the going currency exchange rate and keep the difference.
The poster came down in 2008.
1. Does the $586 Million cover the losses of the individuals that were scammed?
2. Will they get it or is this a big, fat payday for the Government? (Hint: usually is)
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
My mother-in-law got a phone call saying that she owed back taxes and would be arrested if she didn't pay. Now, this is a woman who has no income other than her pension. She went to a Western Union and tried to transfer money to pay the fraudster, and the agent refused to let her send the money. She was furious, and called my wife, who fortunately told her mom that she is an idiot who should thank the agent.
If this is the kind of fraud they are talking about, I sympathize with Western Union. How exactly do they determine what is fraudulent, and what should they do?
The ftc.gov filing says:
Western Union’s failure to comply with anti-money laundering laws provided fraudsters and other criminals with a means to transfer criminal proceeds and victimize innocent people
Can anyone post what those "anti-money laundering laws" say? I am curious how the average Western Union employee would really know if something is fraud, and deal with it.
I've discovered that quite a few folks in the US think that an offer to pay them via bank transfer is a sure indicator that I'm trying to scam them, or seeking to hack into their bank account.
Not to mention all the places in the US that *require* payment via cheque or other paper instrument. WTF? Is it still, like, 1975 there? Seriously--I've not written a cheque in close to 20 years, but on a recent visit there, I was obliged to buy some money orders because that was the only alternative they'd accept other than me coming in personally with a big wad of cash!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Government to WU: We've been watching you aid criminals all over the world, for years, and we didn't say anything, but enough is enough!
We want a cut.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wow. I was curious to see if I could find a copy of this poster so did a quick search.
I couldn't find the poster searching for "western union nigeria poster", but this link - titled "Send money to Nigeria" - is totally lacking any kind of warning. Maybe Nigerian spam has petered out a bit recently but it still seems like there should be at least a warning in the footnotes!