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by moneylaundering 2862 days ago
The elements for federal and state money laundering charges would be there. Lying to a bank, in a tri-partite merchant account agreement, email, or phone call, and then obtaining services from that bank, can come down on you as bank fraud, wire fraud, or mail fraud. Once you’re buttoned up on fraud, subsequent transfers of funds can be charged as money laundering. This is true for most states and under federal law.

In a hypothetical scenario where I saw this occurring, I would look for emails, texts, etc where you admit that you actually intend to sell memberships, and the T-shirt sales are merely to obtain payment processing services to get the fraud charges up.

Then I’d rack up the dollar amounts against you under money laundering statutes and stack them so you’d be looking at some pretty major prison time.

All this over selling some T-shirts to get a payment processor for your adult site? You bet! I’m working on very similar cases now.

2 comments

Bundling a physical good with a digital one has been done before, so if I understand correctly the only problem here is that the usage of a t-shirt is purely to circumvent the ban from the bank (due to high chargeback rate)...

In that case, and theoretically, bundling the physical good with a digital access right from the start would be perfectly legal right?

It would still be a dodgy way to reduce chargebacks, but assuming no bank ban occurs, it shouldn't be a breach of contract.

Yes, good faith bundling is just fine, just a business decision as far as I’m concerned, and if it reduces your chargebacks, good!

Circumvention and deception (which require clear intent, hence the emails) are the issue.

Personally I'm nowhere near any of this business (nor any business at all for that matter) and I'm in Europe where I'm sure laws differ. Anyway, just out of curiosity are you involved in this from the law enforcement side?

The T-shirt think I mentioned was just off the cuff, I'm surprised this is actually being done.