4 ms·

I think assuming money laundering was a fair assumption as the article only describes fraudulent activity and nothing else on the matter.

rosndo 5y ago
It’s really not, the idea of laundering cryptocurrency through Steam is ludicrous. It works the other way around, people launder funds from steam into cryptocurrency. Either by buying items with stolen credit cards or by stealing steam accounts.
- leppr 5y ago
  I don't see how that's ludicrous. There's a lot of dirty money on both sides. One could easily imagine a scheme where items or accounts loaded with games bought with dirty BTC are sold for now cleaner fiat or crypto.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    This is the worst way imaginable to cash out dirty bitcoins. You can clean your cryptocurrency without paying Valve outrageous amounts for dirty fiat currency that you’ll just have to launder again.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Drug dealers in the UK used to use inveterate gamblers addicted to fixed-odds betting terminals to launder cash in high-street betting shops. Terrible rate of return, but the rate of return doesn't matter that much if you can't spend the money otherwise.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      How does this clean the money? Now it’s just associated with the gambling addicts unless the drug dealer owns the betting shop himself.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        It's quite clever actually. First, it destroys the traceability of notes (because they go into the FOBT machine with one set of serial numbers and the machine is going to pay out other notes and coins in different denominations). And any cash that investigators are going to track through seizures targeting an organisation gets slowly distributed through a community via its gamblers. Secondly and more importantly, it provides provenance to the money. The gambling money mules (inveterate gamblers who are often addicts, lower ranking gang members, or the dealers themselves) can now move very large amounts of cash around on the street, because if they are stopped by police with large amounts of cash, they have a receipt to show it is what the machine paid out! The money they are carrying is the proceeds of legal gambling, not the proceeds of drugs. It's cleaned. Here's one article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-machines-drug-money-laundering-bookies https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-mac... Things have got a lot simpler for police, because FOBTs are now subject to more restrictions. (And about time: in the 2015/16 year, individuals lost more than £1000 at FOBTs in a single sitting more than 233,000 times)

rosndo 5y ago

It’s really not, the idea of laundering cryptocurrency through Steam is ludicrous. It works the other way around, people launder funds from steam into cryptocurrency. Either by buying items with stolen credit cards or by stealing steam accounts.

leppr 5y ago
I don't see how that's ludicrous. There's a lot of dirty money on both sides. One could easily imagine a scheme where items or accounts loaded with games bought with dirty BTC are sold for now cleaner fiat or crypto.
- rosndo 5y ago
  This is the worst way imaginable to cash out dirty bitcoins. You can clean your cryptocurrency without paying Valve outrageous amounts for dirty fiat currency that you’ll just have to launder again.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Drug dealers in the UK used to use inveterate gamblers addicted to fixed-odds betting terminals to launder cash in high-street betting shops. Terrible rate of return, but the rate of return doesn't matter that much if you can't spend the money otherwise.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    How does this clean the money? Now it’s just associated with the gambling addicts unless the drug dealer owns the betting shop himself.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      It's quite clever actually. First, it destroys the traceability of notes (because they go into the FOBT machine with one set of serial numbers and the machine is going to pay out other notes and coins in different denominations). And any cash that investigators are going to track through seizures targeting an organisation gets slowly distributed through a community via its gamblers. Secondly and more importantly, it provides provenance to the money. The gambling money mules (inveterate gamblers who are often addicts, lower ranking gang members, or the dealers themselves) can now move very large amounts of cash around on the street, because if they are stopped by police with large amounts of cash, they have a receipt to show it is what the machine paid out! The money they are carrying is the proceeds of legal gambling, not the proceeds of drugs. It's cleaned. Here's one article about it: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-machines-drug-money-laundering-bookies https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-mac... Things have got a lot simpler for police, because FOBTs are now subject to more restrictions. (And about time: in the 2015/16 year, individuals lost more than £1000 at FOBTs in a single sitting more than 233,000 times)