Stopping gift card money laundering

[whywefight]

I already posted what i think here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1338474.0 and i still stand for it. The forums policy "benefit of the doubt" is just stupid. Looking at meta when the administration thinks we have an issue with activity points makes me scream.

I stopped reporting single threads and switched to bulk report threads with clear evidence. Maybe you guys remember the two big wipeouts. Currently i am collecting urls.

I switched to "find some proof mode" but in the last days i headed over to: if i have a doubt ill -ve them. This thread just makes me think: i should do it to everything that seems shady.

Sadly i did not have a lot of time the last days, i think i will review the sections in a few hours. There are plenty of places who ppl are welcomed to sell their stolen, cracked, carded and hacked stuff, but not here!

Thx EcuaMobi!

[erikalui]

@erikalui, while I do think we should ban selling gift cards and you clearly do not this is not the subject of this thread. I do agree it's arguable and I don't want to even get into that.
As stated on OP the subject here is stopping the sellers who clearly sell illegally obtained cards. It seems to me you agree on that.

Yes, I too agree such sales should be stopped and users selling such gift cards should be warned and negated so that they stop such sales. Also, buyers should be given some kind of warning so that they too refrain from supporting these sales.

[notlist3d]

I think so too. But if you really think about it. This just cant be helped. People would almost always find away to get things their way. Even if that would mean going through the illegal stuff.

True but tagging them would at least make it more difficult to them and/or slow their illegal business and/or at least push their business to another site, protecting somehow bitcoin's reputation.

Sadly I think this is a moot point as some are obviously ok with buying carded CG... which is honestly sad.  It should catch up with them eventually companies do track addresses of where carded items were sent to.

I don't think it's a moot point. If most non-GC-seller trusted users agree it should be stopped then we can reach an agreement and try to stop them. Of course not everyone will agree.

I applaud you if you and others can get the carded GC's out of here somehow.  My meaning was it is a moot point as there are sadly obviously buyers out there for it.  Willing to take a cheap GC knowing it's carded.   

But if you are able to get even some of them off the market I do think it is a good cause.   It's not something we want people to associate forum with.

[tommorisonwebdesign]

OP tagged me a scammer when I wanted to do a PayPal transaction. No worries, I only deal with LocalBitcoin now. To point, yes I know that GC reselling is a problem and they are scammers out there, but there really isn't anything that can be done. This forum is pretty far down the hill.

[Lauda]

Blame MonetaCoin

'MonetaLeague' would have been more fitting in this case.

Don't care about the name, don't care if people selling legit cards have a hard time. 

You don't.

Let the folks selling gift cards sell them on another forum is what I would argue.  There's waaaaay too much potential for abuse.  There are too many carders and crackers running about and they're quite obviously not going to tell the truth about their cards' provenance.

I understand that, but I don't make the rules. Some people like to give legit sellers a chance.

Personally I do think banning the sell of giftcards would help a lot but it's very arguable I guess.

Even though I'd support such a ban, it is not up to me nor do I see this happening in the foreseeable future.

[Jeremycoin]

Agreed with you, all of this kind of thing must be stopped. But the thing is, how to stop people from doing that? It's impossible if we just telling them not do it, they certainly will do it again. If we just give them a red trust, they can still make another account or buy another one.

[whywefight]

Some people like to give legit sellers a chance.

That one guy is having a hard time here...

[Your Point Is Invalid]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

[tommorisonwebdesign]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

Excellent point (pun intended)

I was in Brazil where there were no Canadian banks. Only way to convert Paypal to Bitcoin was through this forum, and EucaMobi left negative feedback. Guilty before proven innocent, is how OP sees things.

[whywefight]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

The only argument is always: other do it or have it done before. Whyyyy not them???

Well its a start. Feel free to call out those user who are doing shady stuff in your opinion.

[EcuaMobi]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

He would have just said so when asked. That's clearly not the case. Do you honestly think he buys/gets cards and sells them at a loss instead of avoid getting them in the first place? Granted everything at all is possible but extremely unlikely!

In any case as I said before it's not like I'm assuming guilty until proven otherwise nor am I asking others to do so. I'm targeting only those who seem extremely suspicious. And it'd be easy for them to explain how they're getting the codes. They can explain it to an escrow or other very trusted member and be clean.

But of course most users won't be able to explain it clearly.

Excellent point (pun intended)

I was in Brazil where there were no Canadian banks. Only way to convert Paypal to Bitcoin was through this forum, and EucaMobi left negative feedback. Guilty before proven innocent, is how OP sees things.

I left feedback on your profile not because you tried to deal with paypal. You being in Brazil has nothing to do with anything. I did it because you tried to buy trust ("Want to buy Bitcoin with PayPal and earn positive trust")  and it was just neutral!
Several times people get negative trust for trust farming.

[Quickseller]

A couple things that you should keep in mind when deciding if someone is actually laundering money (or being an accomplice thereof) via gift cards:

*Gift cards are not as fungible as cash is. With an Amazon gift card, I can only buy something that is sold by Amazon, and I have to pay shipping if my order is not large enough and/or if I don't have prime. With cash on the other hand, I can buy anything from anywhere provided that I have enough money
*Because of the above fact anyone considering to buy a gift card is going to want to pay less then the face value for gift cards. The value that buyers are willing to pay is going to depend on the reputation of the seller as well as the store the gift card is for. A $100 gift card to Amazon is probably going to sell for more then a $100 gift card to Home Depot because there is a much wider variety of products that can be purchased with the Amazon gift card then the Home Depot GC.
*I believe there to be a number of websites that facilitate the trade of various gift cards that "guarantee" each trade and have certain safeguards in place to prevent sellers from selling stolen gift cards and/or gift cards purchased with stolen  credit cards and/or other forms of fraud
*There are a number of examples of when I may have a gift card that I am willing to sell a gift card for less then face value that does not involve any kind of fraud/money laundering:

• I received a $50 Amazon Gift card from my Aunt/Uncle/ect. for Christmas/my Birthday/ect.
• I just purchased $x thousand dollars worth of appliances/supplies from Home Depot for a new patio and was given a $500 Home Depot gift card to entice me to come back for my next project
• As an incentive for me renewing my contract with AT&T, I was given a $100 gift card to Target
• I participated in a promotion at Walmart in which I receive a $25 Gift card after spending $x dollars in one trip
• ect.

In addition to the above, I may have purchased a gift card at a discount from a site that offers buyer protections/guarantees against gift cards that are purchased with stolen Credit Cards (and other fraud) and I am attempting to flip them for a profit.

When leaving negative trust for someone who is potentially laundering money via stolen Gift Cards, good judgment should be used. If I just had a birthday then I might have $200-$300 worth of gift cards for sale in varying amounts. I also might be purchasing gift cards on an above mentioned site attempting to flip/resell gift cards that I have good reason to believe are not purchased with stolen funds (note: this is very different then outright not knowing where the gift cards came from and/or saying "I don't know" if stolen credit cards(/ect) were used to purchase the gift cards).

It is also possible that, even though I know that a gift card was purchased with legit funds that I want to limit the amount of time that I am liable in the off-chance that something does go wrong with the gift card. From what I have seen, many sellers call this the "warranty period". A gift card with a 3 day warranty is obviously purchased with stolen funds, the same is true for a one week warranty or a 10 day warranty. A warranty closer to a month would have a better indication that the GC are not stolen/laundered, and a warranty that can be measured in multiple months (and is being sold by someone with a strong trading reputation) would make me more certain that stolen funds are not being used to purchase the gift cards. The actual threshold of when a GC is laundered or not is going to be a judgment call.

Regardless of the above, more or less anyone selling Starbucks Gift Cards is laundering money, period.

I am not able to vouch for any Gift Card sellers, however I don't think that anonymous22 is laundering money via Gift Cards.

kashish948 on the other hand has long been on my radar, and TC even left him a negative several months ago, although it was mostly based on speculation and was removed after a week or so.

[EcuaMobi]

I generally agree with you Quickseller. Of course this is not exact science, but the "benefit of the doubt" has exonerated too many untrustworthy users here.

*There are a number of examples of when I may have a gift card that I am willing to sell a gift card for less then face value that does not involve any kind of fraud/money laundering:

• I received a $50 Amazon Gift card from my Aunt/Uncle/ect. for Christmas/my Birthday/ect.
• I just purchased $x thousand dollars worth of appliances/supplies from Home Depot for a new patio and was given a $500 Home Depot gift card to entice me to come back for my next project
• As an incentive for me renewing my contract with AT&T, I was given a $100 gift card to Target
• I participated in a promotion at Walmart in which I receive a $25 Gift card after spending $x dollars in one trip
• ect.

None of these examples covers having a seemingly unlimited supply of several kind of cards. As I said on OP that's a big red flag. anonymous22 is selling 14 kinds of cards and offers to get a lot of others too. It's very hard to believe they are obtained by legal means.

I've applied my best judgement here and of course I could be wrong. Fortunately removing a feedback is even easier than adding it. I've asked him to prove the origin of their cards to any very trusted user asking him not to disclose the method itself. I added the negative trust only after he refused. However the offer is still opened and I'll remove the feedback as soon as a very trusted member confirms the method is legal.

I am not able to vouch for any Gift Card sellers, however I don't think that anonymous22 is laundering money via Gift Cards.

We disagree on this point but I recognize I can't be 100% sure. But he, you and everyone else must recognize how easy it would be for him to prove he's not doing anything wrong, right?

[xetsr]

I generally agree with you Quickseller. Of course this is not exact science, but the "benefit of the doubt" has exonerated too many untrustworthy users here.

*There are a number of examples of when I may have a gift card that I am willing to sell a gift card for less then face value that does not involve any kind of fraud/money laundering:

• I received a $50 Amazon Gift card from my Aunt/Uncle/ect. for Christmas/my Birthday/ect.
• I just purchased $x thousand dollars worth of appliances/supplies from Home Depot for a new patio and was given a $500 Home Depot gift card to entice me to come back for my next project
• As an incentive for me renewing my contract with AT&T, I was given a $100 gift card to Target
• I participated in a promotion at Walmart in which I receive a $25 Gift card after spending $x dollars in one trip
• ect.

None of these examples covers having a seemingly unlimited supply of several kind of cards. As I said on OP that's a big red flag. anonymous22 is selling 14 kinds of cards and offers to get a lot of others too. It's very hard to believe they are obtained by legal means.

I've applied my best judgement here and of course I could be wrong. Fortunately removing a feedback is even easier than adding it. I've asked him to prove the origin of their cards to any very trusted user asking him not to disclose the method itself. I added the negative trust only after he refused. However the offer is still opened and I'll remove the feedback as soon as a very trusted member confirms the method is legal.

I am not able to vouch for any Gift Card sellers, however I don't think that anonymous22 is laundering money via Gift Cards.

We disagree on this point but I recognize I can't be 100% sure. But he, you and everyone else must recognize how easy it would be for him to prove he's not doing anything wrong, right?

anonymous22 has a shady past. He was reselling bad cards and made a fuss over refunding. Negative feedback was removed as he paid back. I'm 99% sure his cards are fraudulently obtained and he will troll you with the I didn't nothing wrong as I'm just reselling excuse.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=729896.0

[Your Point Is Invalid]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

He would have just said so when asked. That's clearly not the case. Do you honestly think he buys/gets cards and sells them at a loss instead of avoid getting them in the first place? Granted everything at all is possible but extremely unlikely!

In any case as I said before it's not like I'm assuming guilty until proven otherwise nor am I asking others to do so. I'm targeting only those who seem extremely suspicious. And it'd be easy for them to explain how they're getting the codes. They can explain it to an escrow or other very trusted member and be clean.

But of course most users won't be able to explain it clearly.

Yes I honestly think he earns these giftcards and sells them at a loss, if he has no use for these cards then he must get the cards exchanged for something that is actually of use to him (ex. bitcoin)

The point is, some people ( some from third world countries) use legal methods to get these giftcards and then sell them at less than face value as 80% in bitcoin is better than 100% giftcard that you cant use,


Also, if i were using a method to get these cards, i wouldnt tell anyone, if you have been on the forum for the last year or so, you would see that no-one here is trusted

Also I find the coordinated trust abuse from you and your friends interesting 

[EcuaMobi]

Yes I honestly think he earns these giftcards and sells them at a loss, if he has no use for these cards then he must get the cards exchanged for something that is actually of use to him (ex. bitcoin)

The point is, some people ( some from third world countries) use legal methods to get these giftcards and then sell them at less than face value as 80% in bitcoin is better than 100% giftcard that you cant use,

In the very unlikely case you're right then he'll just have to explain it to a trusted user as stated.

Also, if i were using a method to get these cards, i wouldnt tell anyone, if you have been on the forum for the last year or so, you would see that no-one here is trusted

Yes, unfortunately nobody is 100% trusted. But whom do you trust more: anonymous22 or the best-rated users on this forum?
It's definitely healthier for the forum that he trusts one of the most trusted users here than we all trust anonymous22, don't you think?

Also I find the coordinated trust abuse from you and your friends interesting  

For you "trust abuse" means "trying to stop the selling of illegal items", right?
I really don't think the fact they agree selling illegal goods is wrong is interesting or strange.

anonymous22 has a shady past. He was reselling bad cards and made a fuss over refunding. Negative feedback was removed as he paid back. I'm 99% sure his cards are fraudulently obtained and he will troll you with the I didn't nothing wrong as I'm just reselling excuse.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=729896.0

TBH I didn't know about that, thanks. I agree that's an extra reason to believe it's extremely probable their cards are not legal.

[whywefight]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

He would have just said so when asked. That's clearly not the case. Do you honestly think he buys/gets cards and sells them at a loss instead of avoid getting them in the first place? Granted everything at all is possible but extremely unlikely!

In any case as I said before it's not like I'm assuming guilty until proven otherwise nor am I asking others to do so. I'm targeting only those who seem extremely suspicious. And it'd be easy for them to explain how they're getting the codes. They can explain it to an escrow or other very trusted member and be clean.

But of course most users won't be able to explain it clearly.

Yes I honestly think he earns these giftcards and sells them at a loss, if he has no use for these cards then he must get the cards exchanged for something that is actually of use to him (ex. bitcoin)

The point is, some people ( some from third world countries) use legal methods to get these giftcards and then sell them at less than face value as 80% in bitcoin is better than 100% giftcard that you cant use,


Also, if i were using a method to get these cards, i wouldnt tell anyone, if you have been on the forum for the last year or so, you would see that no-one here is trusted

Also I find the coordinated trust abuse from you and your friends interesting 

For what job does one get paid in bulk with gcs??

[Your Point Is Invalid]

I've seen your trust rating left on this user, to me, your actions are ridiculous, I've seen people give 20% discounts on things before without you or anyone else taking any action, but, if it is giftcards, you suspect it is fraud?
You literally have no evidence against these people
I'm sorry that people from third world countries work hard to gain these giftcards then sell them at a discount to turn their money quickly
I also see other people following you, giving negs without any evidence whatsoever

But hey, if you think what you think should alter everyone's perception, then go ahead, make ratings without having ground to stand on

He would have just said so when asked. That's clearly not the case. Do you honestly think he buys/gets cards and sells them at a loss instead of avoid getting them in the first place? Granted everything at all is possible but extremely unlikely!

In any case as I said before it's not like I'm assuming guilty until proven otherwise nor am I asking others to do so. I'm targeting only those who seem extremely suspicious. And it'd be easy for them to explain how they're getting the codes. They can explain it to an escrow or other very trusted member and be clean.

But of course most users won't be able to explain it clearly.

Yes I honestly think he earns these giftcards and sells them at a loss, if he has no use for these cards then he must get the cards exchanged for something that is actually of use to him (ex. bitcoin)

The point is, some people ( some from third world countries) use legal methods to get these giftcards and then sell them at less than face value as 80% in bitcoin is better than 100% giftcard that you cant use,


Also, if i were using a method to get these cards, i wouldnt tell anyone, if you have been on the forum for the last year or so, you would see that no-one here is trusted

Also I find the coordinated trust abuse from you and your friends interesting 

For what job does one get paid in bulk with gcs??

Why dont you guys do your research?
There are apps that pay you in giftcards for downloading other apps
Do some research before next question

[james.lent]

Why dont you guys do your research?
There are apps that pay you in giftcards for downloading other apps
Do some research before next question

I think you should do yours. With the amount they're selling you would need an army to earn that much from apps. Stop being naive.

[Your Point Is Invalid]

Why dont you guys do your research?
There are apps that pay you in giftcards for downloading other apps
Do some research before next question

I think you should do yours. With the amount they're selling you would need an army to earn that much from apps. Stop being naive.

Stop being an idiot, anyone with a relatively small amount of investment can buy about 50 vps in bulk, install an android emulator and run their method in mass
Not everyone is narrow minded and wont go the extra mile to make a decent amount of money

When you are from certain countries, you have to go the extra mile when making money online, you wouldn't know