Dwolla no longer allowed to deal with Mt. Gox? (DHS Shut them down?)

[Evan]

There is another email sent regarding this. It is not may not be a Dwolla-specific matter and may be much more important than people yet realize. The DHS is apparently seizing Mt. Gox's/Mutum Sigillum's accounts (presumably Dwolla accounts):

    As of 12:13 PM on 5/14/2013:

    Due to recent court orders by the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland seizing the account of Mutum Sigillum LLC (“Mt. Gox”), Dwolla will be unable to complete your recent bank transfer to Mutum Sigillum LLC and any future transactions.

    Instead, this transaction will be routed to your Dwolla account on its scheduled arrival date and time. These funds will then be accessible to you.

    Dwolla is not party to this matter nor does it have any information or further insight into the situation. We strongly encourages those with questions to contact Mutum Sigillum LLC

    We will continue to assist our users to the fullest extent that the law and company resources will allow.

    Note: Dwolla requires a court order before honoring requests such as seizing funds or revoking access to an account.

    On behalf of Dwolla, we apologize for this inconvenience.

Update 4:28 pm ET: I've received a response from Dwolla support that they cannot provide a copy of the order at this time:

    Thank you for your email. We were told this will be made pubic [sic] but do not have a time frame for when this would be happening.

Additionally, a bitcointalk poster received the following response, describing the order as a Seizure Warrant: (transcribed)

    As of 12:13 PM on 5/14/2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a "Seizure Warrant" for the funds associated with Mutum Sigillum's Dwolla account (a.k.a. Mt. Gox). In light of the court order, procured by the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla has seized account activities with Dwolla services for Mutum Sigillum.

This does not appear to be related to CoinLab, and appears to be a criminal matter being pursued by the DHS. It seems unlikely that is would be limited to Dwolla, but it's unclear to me what other assets Mutum Sigillum / Mt. Gox might have in the US.

Bafflingly, the mood on bitcointalk appears to be that this is all a hoax to try to manipulate pricing...

[Evan]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ebzru/dwolla_no_longer_allowed_to_do_business_with_mtgox/

[cypherdoc]

what's baffling is your post and title.

they are far from dead as active trading indicates.

[limitless]

I think you just need to verify your dwolla account now. Then you can get funds

[QuantPlus]

People step back from the keyboard and take a deep breath.


1) Dwolla is not shutdown

2) MTGOX is not shut down

3) DHS didn't seize anything, they simply stopped Dwolla from doing business with GOX


The bottom line is that you cannot convert BTC into USD via Dwolla, that's all.

If converting BTC to USD is your goal there are still quite a few better alternatives than Dwolla in the first place.


~BCX~

This = 15% plunge in BTC = buying opportunity

[GuiltySpark343]

More info here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/dwolla-mt-gox-2013-5

[Stephen Gornick]

3) DHS didn't seize anything, they simply stopped Dwolla from doing business with GOX

You must have a different definition of "seize" than the rest of the world.

Dwolla called it what it is ... "seize":

seizing the account of Mutum Sigillum LLC (“Mt. Gox”),

Also, Camp BX still allows Dwolla transfers, so the following is specific to Mt. Gox:

The bottom line is that you cannot convert BTC into USD via Dwolla, that's all.

[joesmoe2012]

Be interesting to see what happens as everybody finds out whats going on (and as mtgox provides more information).

I'm sure they are going to claim any funds lost are the fault of the USA DHS and not take responsibility.