Coinbase freezing funds because there's no official documents of betting.

[o48o]

How interesting, OP. You highlighted everything in red, and the editing of the post took place five days ago, you could say, on the same day that you created the topic, but, however...
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Not sure why that's interesting. Iranus found more details right after i posted the topic.

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What’s being said about money laundering is complete nonsense, he simply gained access to a service that restricts access for US citizens. Since the service itself has no complaints, what exactly is the problem? I don't even know if providing a fake ID can be considered an offense, since it was "virtually" not on US territory and not with a US service. In any case, the money belongs to him, there was no money laundering involved.

I have so many questions...

I am not sure what definition of money laundering you are looking at, but hiding the origin and owner of the money is definately money laundering, which that gambler did by using fake id and vpn.

Also, i am confused on your definition of "offence". Like what's your argument here? Offence against whom? You think that there wouldn't be repercussions as US citizen if you hacked a bank overseas because it wouldn't be located in US terrority?

Are you aware that the reason why US citizens are restricted in many places is because it's required by US regulators? Are you aware that FATF is based on international agreements?

[KTChampions]

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What’s being said about money laundering is complete nonsense, he simply gained access to a service that restricts access for US citizens. Since the service itself has no complaints, what exactly is the problem? I don't even know if providing a fake ID can be considered an offense, since it was "virtually" not on US territory and not with a US service. In any case, the money belongs to him, there was no money laundering involved.

I have so many questions...

I am not sure what definition of money laundering you are looking at, but hiding the origin and owner of the money is definately money laundering, which that gambler did by using fake id and vpn.

Also, i am confused on your definition of "offence". Like what's your argument here? Offence against whom? You think that you wouln't break any laws if you hacked a bank overseas because it wouldn't reside in US terrority?

Are you aware that the reason why US citizens are restricted in many places is because it's required by US regulators? Are you aware that FATF is based on international agreements?

If you have a lot of questions, maybe you should educate yourself a bit? Google is free.

Under U.S. law, money laundering is the intentional conduct or attempted conduct of financial transactions involving property (funds) derived from specific crimes (so-called predicate offenses) for the purpose of concealing the true origin, source, ownership, or control of those funds, or to facilitate criminal activity.

There is no information indicating that he obtained his funds through criminal means, that is a complete fabrication.
As for the offence, your analogy is really stupid. The service doesn't have a single complaint against him, it literally paid out the winnings - do you get that? How can you equate this with hacking a bank?
Yes, I know what the FATF does, it's time for you to find out, too:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force
Let me know when you find information indicating that he was involved in money laundering, terrorist financing, etc.

[Mayor of ogba]

It is okay to suspect that this is a case of money laundering,  but let's not jump to conclusion without having all fact.  And for the fact that the person in question has not contacted the police or a lawyer doesn't automatically mean the funds are illegal. I'm not trying to play defense here,  but there could be other reasons behind coinbase action.  So,  let's allow the proper authorities to investigate the matter before making any definitive conclusions.

There's no need for us to be arguing whether the funds is legal or illegal because it won't help the person coinbase freezed his account withdraw his funds on coinbase. If the person in question can't provide enough evidence that will convince coinbase that the money is legal, he should get himself a lawyer so that the authorities can trace the funds to its origin. If they find out it's illegal fund, he will go in for it and if it's find out the funds is legal, the court of law will order coinbase to release the funds.

[WhoYouCantKill]

There's no need for us to be arguing whether the funds is legal or illegal because it won't help the person coinbase freezed his account withdraw his funds on coinbase. If the person in question can't provide enough evidence that will convince coinbase that the money is legal, he should get himself a lawyer so that the authorities can trace the funds to its origin. If they find out it's illegal fund, he will go in for it and if it's find out the funds is legal, the court of law will order coinbase to release the funds.

I don’t know but these offshore sportsbooks are really supposed to make exceptions in situations like this, I mean exceptions in terms of giving an official record of the user’s activities in their casino, his deposits, withdrawals and bets, because that would’ve really helped to make the whole procedure a lot more easier, because coin base wouldn’t possibly just ignore such proof except they deliberately just wanna syphon the funds.

[pawanjain]

$900k is not a small amount to lose. Even though the user has not yet technically lose the money but it is kinda gone if the user is unable to provide the source of funds.
But does it give Coinbase the right to keep that amount to themselves ? Isn't it like free money for Coinbase ? This shouldn't be legal.
However, one should refrain from keep such large amounts on centralized wallets and should rather choose a non-custodian wallet.

[AmaGold70]

I found this from reddit:



This is one reason why one should keep a detailed spreadsheet of your betting history.

Let me start by approaching this in good faith and assume that user is not lying. Then only thing that would work their favor is to keep as detailed data of their betting history as possible.

I believe that in regulated casinos, you can ask for all betting data. At least EU citizens have law on their side and casinos are required to give all the data they have about the user activity if they choose to request it. That can take couple of months, but resolving these issues take time anyway.

Either case, imho the issue to resolve is with the casino, not with the exchange. Exchange is just following the law and won't be accepting vague data, because it's their license on the line.

But in this case, i genuinely believe this is about money laundering. Because why wouldn't the user contact to police or a lawyer if the money is legally theirs?

Edit: Since people don't read the comments, i am pointing out in here that. Iranus already provided the update, confirming that this was money laundering attempt.

I think their is nothing wrong if Coinbase as an exchange wants to know ones source of income before withdrawing huge amount of money because they know there are some fraudulent people who scam people, and withdraw such money to their exchange. However, if ones account is frozen, and their is an evidence or prove of the fund in your exchange account, your account has to be freed or lifted from ban, and in this case, the evidence has been provided, and his account has to be freed. The owner of the Coinbase account should be able to recover his fund if really he is the owner of that account.

[Floxynice]

It is okay to suspect that this is a case of money laundering,  but let's not jump to conclusion without having all fact.  And for the fact that the person in question has not contacted the police or a lawyer doesn't automatically mean the funds are illegal. I'm not trying to play defense here,  but there could be other reasons behind coinbase action.  So,  let's allow the proper authorities to investigate the matter before making any definitive conclusions.

There's no need for us to be arguing whether the funds is legal or illegal because it won't help the person coinbase freezed his account withdraw his funds on coinbase. If the person in question can't provide enough evidence that will convince coinbase that the money is legal, he should get himself a lawyer so that the authorities can trace the funds to its origin. If they find out it's illegal fund, he will go in for it and if it's find out the funds is legal, the court of law will order coinbase to release the funds.

900k is a huge amount of money, why would someone keep such an amount of money on an exchange in the first place? And the worst case is that he is unable to provide sufficient evidence to prove the source of that money. I actually do think that that is an act of carelessness. Whether it is a money laundering case (which I already suspect) or not,  the owner of that account just made himself a suspect by his actions. I am not going to jump into conclusions on this issue, but if the money is truly clean, then he should involve the authorities to at least withdraw his money and go his way.

[Localhostspeed]

There's no need for us to be arguing whether the funds is legal or illegal because it won't help the person coinbase freezed his account withdraw his funds on coinbase. If the person in question can't provide enough evidence that will convince coinbase that the money is legal, he should get himself a lawyer so that the authorities can trace the funds to its origin. If they find out it's illegal fund, he will go in for it and if it's find out the funds is legal, the court of law will order coinbase to release the funds.

Until there is evidence that the money came from the casino as laundered amount. I thought we all knew withdrawals that came from casino is coming from their hot wallet and clearly coinbase saw the origin of the casino. If the affected person withdraw the money from the casino and passed it through other protocols, then they might as well have to explained why they do that, we can't even say if this was a direct from stake to coinbase.

What if this person withdraw the money from stake and passed the money through a privacy protocol before getting into the coinbase. Everything is possible, if there is such evidence, he might just have to provide anything to get his money which I'm sure coinbase are going to ask him. And for everyone that loves to deposit large amount of money to exchanges, this is a big lesson for us all.

[Roseline492]

Is this money real or fantasy, how on earth will someone send such amount of money into a bet account. What was he thinking. Maybe he has been doing it with other betting sites and wants to try it again here on Coinbase without reading or understanding the TOS because he needs it quickly. What bank allows such withdrawal into a bet account, the amount is huge. Well I have been hearing how some dubious scammer sends money from there victims accounts into bet account to avoid tracing them easily, especially when the have access to the person's account. Some will buy gift cards, data, and other items online another limit access to them.

The story doesn't say he deposited all the money at ones on the betting platform from the bank but however from Op explanation it seems he was wining and accumulating the money on the gambling platform till it became this huge that was when he decided to withdraw, although his mistake was not knowing how Coinbase could be very demanding sometimes even when you send an amount that's more than $2k on the exchange especially if the money is from a gambling platform because I don't know if they have the mindset that all gamblers are scammers.

[Nwada001]

It is okay to suspect that this is a case of money laundering,  but let's not jump to conclusion without having all fact.  And for the fact that the person in question has not contacted the police or a lawyer doesn't automatically mean the funds are illegal. I'm not trying to play defense here,  but there could be other reasons behind coinbase action.  So,  let's allow the proper authorities to investigate the matter before making any definitive conclusions.

What about a situation where the same person in question has given a suggestion about how to use a service illegally by using a fake ID and VPN as identified by a member in this thread? Does that not put him in the main spot of being suspected of being involved in money laundering rather than him being innocent?

[lionheart78]

This is one reason why one should keep a detailed spreadsheet of your betting history.

Yes we must keep the record of our betting activities, but the problem here is whether the platform accept gambling as source of income.

I also experienced my funds frozen, and I submitted my source of income from signature campaign hosted by a gambling platform.  The exchange platform does not honor the funds that came from gambling asking me to provide other source of income except from gambling because they do not consider it.

Let me start by approaching this in good faith and assume that user is not lying. Then only thing that would work their favor is to keep as detailed data of their betting history as possible.

Gambling as source of fund works on coinbase if the person submit tax record of the winnings

Lottery / gambling winnings

• Gambling winning tax reporting records (e.g., IRS Form W-2G)

[Mr_Brilliant$]

$900k is not a small amount to lose. Even though the user has not yet technically lose the money but it is kinda gone if the user is unable to provide the source of funds.
But does it give Coinbase the right to keep that amount to themselves ? Isn't it like free money for Coinbase ? This shouldn't be legal.
However, one should refrain from keep such large amounts on centralized wallets and should rather choose a non-custodian wallet.

Free money.  You just jumped into conclusion that's it's free money. Just what if the terms and conditions that everyone doesn't read says they have the right to sieze any money that cannot be verified and use it as they like. Will you still call that free money, even after the person agreed to the terms. I won't call that fake money at all.

This also proves further why using centralised platforms poses a greater risk than non custodian wallet. Not saying non custodian wallet are completely safe. All that I am saying is that, the risk is way more smaller than using centralised platforms.

[ZeroVinsonN]

It is okay to suspect that this is a case of money laundering,  but let's not jump to conclusion without having all fact.  And for the fact that the person in question has not contacted the police or a lawyer doesn't automatically mean the funds are illegal. I'm not trying to play defense here,  but there could be other reasons behind coinbase action.  So,  let's allow the proper authorities to investigate the matter before making any definitive conclusions.

There's no need for us to be arguing whether the funds is legal or illegal because it won't help the person coinbase freezed his account withdraw his funds on coinbase. If the person in question can't provide enough evidence that will convince coinbase that the money is legal, he should get himself a lawyer so that the authorities can trace the funds to its origin. If they find out it's illegal fund, he will go in for it and if it's find out the funds is legal, the court of law will order coinbase to release the funds.

Still on the possibility of the money actually being his own, we can ask for provision of evidence to prove that the money indeed belongs to him and this isn't an attempt at money laundering, he obviously won't be able to get his hands on all of his gambling records to prove that it's his money that has been moving around from one platform to the other but then again if coinbase can't prove that there is something illegal going on then they should release the funds without him having to get his lawyers involved.
I still believe it's probably a case of money laundering though.