Fake Online Stores Reveal Gamblers' Shadow Banking System (reuters.com)

randomErr shares an exclusive report from Reuters: A network of dummy online stores offering household goods has been used as a front for internet gambling payments. The seven sites in Europe to sell items including fabric, DVD cases, and maps are fake outlets. The faux store fronts are a multinational system to disguise payments for the $40 billion global online gambling industry. Online gambling is illegal in many countries and some U.S. states. The dummy sites underline a strategy which regulators, card issuers and banks have yet to tackle head-on. The scheme found by Reuters involved websites which accepted payments for household items from a reporter but did not deliver any products. Instead, staff who answered helpdesk numbers on the sites said the outlets did not sell the product advertised, but that they were used to help process gambling payments, mostly for Americans.

Comments

They do this in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember in the 90's seeing people ( in Japan) run out of pachinko halls with dozens of hello kitty pencils and trinkets, to a mysterious "door" front. You could not see who was behind the door. All you know, was these "hello kitty" items yielded some mucho yen.

Sweden is a paradise for this...

[MindPrison]

...In sweden we have roughly 7.5 minutes of ads running on TV each 15th minute, 5 minutes of those are dedicated ads, and 2.5 minutes are self-ads (promos for TV shows + sponsors).

The point I am making here - is to point out just HOW lucrative Online gambling is - it's the internets next "porn" industry.

Let's say that there are 10 x 30 second ads during those 5 minutes of pure ads on Swedish tv - guess how many of them are ads for Online Casinos, betting and gambling sites? Half of them, and sometimes over. yes - thats at least 5 ads for Online Gambling each 15 minutes of TV space. And thats not counting the numerous "sponsored by this-and-that-betting".

A sure shot how lucrative this is - is how many TV stars and former Sports Champions gets paid to "endorse" the Online gambling.

Of course they have to have their entirely own Banking system!

Re:Vice: perhaps normal life is too dull

[mark-t]

would your friend stop if they were illegal tomorrow?
I bet not.

Not the OP here, but if they were illegal, I can imagine this would pose generally present a significantly greater inconvenience for him to get them, and it's not remotely inconceivable that the added inconvenience, coupled with the fact that he would also have to knowingly have to break the law to even get the cigarettes, might exceed the extents to which he is willing to go to satisfy his addiction. The result is that he might go a very long time without cigarettes, and discover that within a few months, he no longer even has any cravings for them.

Of course, some would likely still find ways around the system, illegally smuggling them into their area and taking sufficient measures to not get caught, but I would expect that the people who are smuggling them into a region where they are illegal are often not even addicted themselves, but are simply wanting to exploit other people's addction, selling them under the table at a profit to parties in their region, but this kind of activity happens "off the radar" and isn't something that a person who isn't actively trying to look for such sources of their addiction (and is quite willing to disregard the law in the process) is going to tend to know how to get. It's certainly not something that you're going to be able to find in your local yellow pages, at any rate... any would-be business or entrepreneurship that attempts to advertise their illegal activity so publicly would be shut down long before they could hope to turn a profit.

The reason people who use illegal drugs are often willing to resort to illegal measures to get them is because they *already* have a disregard for the law, or else they would not be using the illegal drug in the first place. Existing smokers, addicted to nicotine, which is legally available through cigarettes, do not necessarily have that disregard, so no assumptions about one's indifference to the legality of its availability can be made as it might otherwise apply to drugs that are illegal.