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FBI Says Islamic State Used eBay, PayPal To Channel Money To the US (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Islamic State allegedly used PayPal and fake eBay transactions to channel money to an operative in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reports. The man who allegedly received the money was American citizen Mohamed Elshinawy, who was arrested last year in Maryland. The FBI claims that Elshinawy, in his early 30s, sold computer printers on eBay as a front in order to receive the payments through PayPal. The details have come to light because of a recently unsealed FBI affidavit, which alleges Elshinawy was part of a worldwide network that used such channels to fund ISIS. Elshinawy received $8,700 from ISIS, including five PayPal payments from senior ISIS official Siful Sujan through his technology company. Those funds were used to buy a laptop, a cellphone, and a VPN to communicate with IS, according to the affidavit. Sujan was killed in a drone strike in 2015. eBay told The Wall Street Journal it "has zero tolerance for criminal activities taking place on our marketplace." Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for PayPal said it "invests significant time and resources in working to prevent terrorist activity on our platform. We proactively report suspicious activities and respond quickly to lawful requests to support law enforcement agencies in their investigations."
PayPal gives you enough of a hard time getting your money when your legit.... They freeze funds at will and seemingly at random based on smallest complaint or suspicion... But activity like this gets by???
I hope the FBI has more evidence than the summary or the article has. All that they state is that he sold a cellphone, laptop and a VPN service to a company. That company happened to be owned by a guy associate with ISIS.
Then they make the leap that the money paid was going to be used to plan an attack in the US. All of which may be true but unless they have the guy on record as planning an attack or captured his plans it's going to be hard to prove that case. So either the FBI has a weak case or this is a really weak article.
I've bought things internationally. Less than $1000 it's not a big deal. Probably an easy way to spoof the payment system. But it takes a lot of payments. Just sell as many Xbox3's as you need. If they're over priced, no one else will buy them. And, hey, no complaints.
on a different note
I needed to make a cash payment over $1000, for travel arrangements (in Italy). It took 3 trips to the bank, I had to be in person to sign, and multiple forms filled out. As an individual, international transactions are fantastically difficult. They're solving the wrong problem.
I agree with eBay here: we can have no tolerance for terrorist activity. The only safe answer is to completely shut down eBay and PayPal. Please, won't you think of the children!
So they funded him by buying goods and services with money? Motherfucker, that's a JOB!
I read the internet for the articles.
The US used Libya and Saudi Arabia and Turkey to channel weapons to ISIS (and Al Qaeda.. double your profits). Did eBay or PayPal provide free shipping for such a big order? Or was it "structured" to avoid detection? Really, what's the big deal?
capcha: plunders
If Islamic State wants to give foreign aid donations to the USA despite the lack of diplomatic relations, that's nice. It's not as if the major challenge would-be terrorists in America face is lack of money. For those in need of money, does their sense of honor prevent them from robbing people or are they afraid of being shot before they can blow themselves up?
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How exactly things happened?
Elshinawy sold printers and someone from ISIS bought it, and that was it?
Nothing eBay can possibly do in a case that is a legal transaction really... well, of course, hand out information, let police monitor accounts when it's known to be tied to terrorist operations and whatnot. But it's not like they are dealing in terrordollars or something.
Frankly, I'm more afraid of the FBI than any Muslim.
Being afraid of one's government having too much power is both logical and wise.
More people have been killed by their own nation's government than have died in all the wars in recorded history, by orders of magnitude.
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
While the government would have us believe that if they can read everyones emails and facebook accounts at will we are all safer, the truth is that with all the backdoors in the world they cannot stop terrorism. If it wasn't ebay or paypal it would be another service or method. Sophisticated terror orgs have a multitude of creative ways to do what they do. Education and freely available resources will do more to curb terrorism than a ban on encryption or a money transfer service... Then again if there is no big bad wolf how will politicians scare us to convince us they are needed while they serve the interests of elites to stuff their pockets with wealth and gain more power?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Neither Stalin not Hitler killed off more than what was killed on each side in the war
It really does depend how you count, but I think we can agree that if the State kills the most productive farmers, then the State is responsible for the famine that follows. Just these deaths alone, "The Holodomar", is understood to be be somewhere between 7 million and 10 million.
Some experts disagree as to if these deaths can be correctly classified as "murder" rather than "execution."
The thing with Mao is that while he was responsible for doing some "purging", he lost control of the situation entirely. so again people argue how many of the tens millions or so "purge" deaths could be blamed on him. What is a fact is the Mao himself said that as many as 50 million people needed to be "purged." After the "purges" came "the great leap forward" which like with Stalin cased a major famine, with an estimated 48 million people killed.
"His name was James Damore."
We have to close ebay and paypal. They are a bunch of terrorist allies it seems.
aaaaaaa
This clearly means we need to get rid of cash and move to a cashless society
I thought you had one since like 2008...? ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
Strat, your logic is ironclad. So... when are you coming home to New Hampshire? ;)
Have gnu, will travel.
It's probably a more extreme statement than is accurate. The Mongols killed huge numbers of people *not* under their rule before being conquered. But I believe both China and Egypt developed a policy of when there was a crop failure stealing all the food from the "less loyal" provinces and distributing it to the loyal provinces. In both cases this resulted in massive deaths, but how much was just redistribution of deaths that would have happened anyway is uncertain.
You could also reasonably count all soldiers killed in war as people being killed by their own government. Especially those of draftees. But in cases where the action was defensive it's not clear that this isn't just redistributing deaths that would have happened anyway. You can even sometimes make that argument in wars of aggression.
All that said, population numbers have been increasing so rapidly, that you can basically ignore all deaths before about 1800 if you're just counting numbers. You could even declare that "anybody born over 100 years ago would be dead by now anyway". But governments are both one of the largest threats AND one of the largest defenders of human life at any one time. And your own government usually sits on both sides of that balance. Exceptions exist, like Pot Pol, but they are rare. And there are also exceptions in the other direction, also rare, and not very visible. Sweden probably counts as one in the decade of the 1990s. (You've got to index that by time, and you need to look at historic data to be sure that you aren't being mislead by biased news coverage. Also, consider Iceland. The government can't take credit for the defense given by isolation. Otherwise it would probably replace Sweden as my beneficial example.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Strat, your logic is ironclad. So... when are you coming home to New Hampshire? ;)
Hah! Thanks! :)
Been keeping an eye on the Free State Project, and yes, thinking about possibly relocating either there or Texas at some point.
Be safe out there! ;)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The 80s called - they want their "wire transfer" back.
In the various countries and banks I've been with over the last 17 years, international transfer have been as easy as domestic payment. The main difference is the length of the account number vs. SWIFT / IBAN, and the slickness of the web form to fill out. Typing in the address of the receiving bank is a bit daft, if you ask me.
If you have to show up with papers to make a small transfer (and below $10.000 is small in today's money), then somebody's doing it wrong. Might not be your fault, maybe it's the other side who is stuck in the past. But international transfer has been a solved problem since the turn of the century.
It is also reported that the terrorists used US Dollars to fund their activities! Ban US Dollar!!!1