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I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play. It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for
by davidmurdoch 19d ago
I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play.
It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them.
Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them.
Luckily, the whole thing blew up on me before I got in serious trouble, rightfully so, and the app was removed by Google, then an investigation followed. A ton of copycat apps popped up immediately after, then a few months months later Google announced their app review process.
- DrammBA 19d agoI love how casually you're dropping this incredible piece of internet lore as if somebody asked you how's the weather.
- davidmurdoch 19d agoHaha. I used to have some blog posts detailing things a bit more, but I let it die when Heroku cancelled their original free tier years ago.
- fnikacevic 19d agoIf you're inspired to rehash it here or another blog you'll have at least this additional reader.
- davidmurdoch 19d agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220119132757/https://davidmurdoch.com/2017/08/05/about-my-dead-side-project-cashify/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220119132757/https://davidmurd...
- eks391 19d agoA domain is only ~$12/year if you don't buy it through a scammy site like godaddy that adds fake fees or quadruples the cost after a year. WordPress is easy for blogs, or you can just vibe code something in an afternoon if you don't care to have comments. Even embedding forms or an emailing tool can be done statically. Heck, there's probably a free option out there for simple posting that I don't know about.
- forgotmypw17 19d agoThe biggest costs are not the money, but the work and cognitive load of the thousand cuts it takes to not only bring all of this up, but keep it running, not to mention migrating the content. However/also, "only" $12 to some is a considerable amount of money to others.
- Onawa 19d agoIf its a static or client-side website, GitHub Pages is free and allows you to use whatever domain you have already own. Almost all of the websites I run are hosted on GitHub Pages. No maintenance required, and updates are as easy as `git push`.
- forgotmypw17 18d agoHaving done this for multiple sites, there's still a lot of friction and gotchas in the setup process, and it's also not guaranteed to not break/rot (e.g. have to renew the domain.) You didn't use the word "just", but I still want to link this article: https://alistapart.com/blog/post/the-most-dangerous-word-in-software-development/ https://alistapart.com/blog/post/the-most-dangerous-word-in-...
- crtasm 19d agowhat was the url? asking for a wayback friend
- davidmurdoch 19d agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220119132757/https://davidmurdoch.com/2017/08/05/about-my-dead-side-project-cashify/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220119132757/https://davidmurd...
- MadnessASAP 19d agoWow! You managed to break almost every financial law and regulation in one go. That's amazing!
- rolandog 18d agoReminded me of Arrested Development's George Bluth's "Light Treason".
- WA 19d agoWhat did you do with all the Google Play Credits?
- davidmurdoch 19d agoWhen you "spend" Google Play Credits in an app, Google Play treats those credits the same as if you paid with real money: they took 30% (their take isn't so steep today), I took 10%, and then I sent the user/buyer the remaining 60% directly from my bank account (I used Dwolla back then). It was risky because I didn't actually receive any money from Google until about a month later.
- skeptic_ai 19d agoWhat you did was money laundering. And big chance for getting in trouble if let’s say ton of credits come from fraud/stolen and then google pays out to you and then crawl back once they realize is fraud. I’m curious how you didn’t get into money laundering problems.
- davidmurdoch 19d agoTechnically it was an unregulated money transference service without KYC. The user that stole the cards from the bookstore was the one doing the money laundering part. I just enabled it (which is probably worse, legally). I was investigated and cooperated fully. Edit: I just remembered, the bank I used for the transference did do KYC for all users who were sent funds. This makes it more like "money dirtying", since the account is tied directly to a real identity.
- skeptic_ai 18d agoThanks for your detailed answer. Could you tell me what other things you had to deal with? Any prison, bad credit, fees, lawyer fees ?
- krageon 18d agoThis is not laundering, it is in fact exactly as the service was meant to be used. As long as you save where the money comes from and where it goes you are at worst operating a discount pseudo-bank. But that's what google is also doing, so we can infer that this is okay.
- IshKebab 19d agoHow did you "accidentally" do something that was so obviously not allowed?
- leetrout 19d agoHe accidentally got caught.
- kulahan 19d agoI’ll never understand people so desperate to find villains in the world.
- davidmurdoch 19d agoI responded to others with more details if you're interested
- davidmurdoch 19d agoI didn't know what a "money transference service" was, and certainly didn't know this service that I didn't know about was highly regulated. I only created it because I had Google Play Credits that were gifted to me. I built an app to "convert" them to cash for myself. I had never built an app before. I was proud of it and tried to make it pretty and professional and useful for others, and used it as a learning experience. The listing on the Play Store was clear about what it was. I had to answer questions about what the API was being used for when I signed up for Dwolla (an actual regulated money transference service). I answered honestly. They approved it. The app sat unused with no downloads for years before someone on Reddit's `r/churning/` posted about it.
- IshKebab 19d agoRight but... You've used gift cards before right? The whole point is that you can't convert them to cash. Not only that but Google/Apple gift cards are notorious for being used in fraud. I guess if you're young...
- 19d ago
- nemomarx 19d ago> It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them. I really want to know what the intended design or use case was for this? This is why people usually only let you turn credits into in app balances right
- Gigachad 19d agoCashing out unwanted gift cards
- samspot 18d agoAnyone interested in this topic should check out https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/gift-card-marketplaces/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/gift-card-marketplace...