Intersango Exchange

[Ichthyo]

However I have one question. How the f*ck could Intersango be complicit in assisting the purchase of banned substances ?

vaguely I recall the following info, but can't find the reference anymore; maybe someone can confirm or elaborate?

anyway, "it was said" the guy buying drugs wired to the Intersango account under the impression he'd be directly paying to the drug supplier. He wasn't aware of bitcoins at all. I.e. the drug dealer made it appear as if by wiring to "Intersango", he would directly pay for the drugs.

[Herodes]

....
Could somebody please explain to me exactly why Intersango should be accused of money laundering and drugsale?

You understand how bitcoin, exchanges etc work. The UK cops aren't exactly renowned for ensuring the right party gets punished, just being in the area and from the right country has often been enough for a guilty verdict. Doubt they would go to a great deal more trouble by understanding how bitcoin works and what actually happened when they can just grab the first link in the chain and mark the case closed.

Yes, from the experience I have in life, what you say makes perfectly sense.


So the rule must be:

"If you don't want to lose, don't play the game"

[Herodes]

However I have one question. How the f*ck could Intersango be complicit in assisting the purchase of banned substances ?

vaguely I recall the following info, but can't find the reference anymore; maybe someone can confirm or elaborate?

anyway, "it was said" the guy buying drugs wired to the Intersango account under the impression he'd be directly paying to the drug supplier. He wasn't aware of bitcoins at all. I.e. the drug dealer made it appear as if by wiring to "Intersango", he would directly pay for the drugs.

I head another twist of that story, some douchebag was asking people to send him money to Intersango, with the reference to his account, then he would purchase bitcoins, and withdraw them. No drugs would ever be sent to anyone.

If that's the case, and judging from the previous history of the Intersango guys, and how they deal with things, it's no wonder this happened. Deposits should be limited to verified accounts, and funds should only be allowed to come from verified bank accounts connected to those verified Intersango accounts. A pain in the ass, yes, but then you would avoid all this stuff.

If some account starts receiving funds from a lot of accounts, then this account shold be freezed for manual investigation, heck if the name of the exchange account holder and the name of the sender of the bank deposit doesn't match, it should be frozen for investigation immediately.

And of course, if some idiot complains to the bank he tried to purchase drugs by sending money to Intersango, he's not only incriminating himself, but also Intersango. Intersango is just a small fry for any bank, and they couldn't care less, so the Intersango guys would need to look after themselves to try to stay under 'the radar'.

[EskimoBob]

Lots of BS can be eliminated by allowing funds in and out from only 1 bank account.
If you close your primary bank account, new account can be added and same rule applies. Probably some paperwork has to be produced to show, that account really is closed.
As simple as that. And guess what, it also adds an extra layer of security.

[dooglus]

Lots of BS can be eliminated by allowing funds in and out from only 1 bank account.
If you close your primary bank account, new account can be added and same rule applies. Probably some paperwork has to be produced to show, that account really is closed.
As simple as that. And guess what, it also adds an extra layer of security.

Does that still allow the scammer to arrange a bunch of individual sales, opening a new Intersango account for each one?  Each Intersango account only receives deposits from a single bank account that way, and business continues for the scammer as before.

[Herodes]

Lots of BS can be eliminated by allowing funds in and out from only 1 bank account.
If you close your primary bank account, new account can be added and same rule applies. Probably some paperwork has to be produced to show, that account really is closed.
As simple as that. And guess what, it also adds an extra layer of security.

Does that still allow the scammer to arrange a bunch of individual sales, opening a new Intersango account for each one?  Each Intersango account only receives deposits from a single bank account that way, and business continues for the scammer as before.

Tow rules could be added to prevent this.

1. An IP can have no more than 1 account.
2. An account can only be accessed from the same IP as the signup, unless the account is verified, then the account holder could select to add more allowed ip's, or set 'no ip restrictions'.

Thus, to continue the fraud scheme, the fraudsters needed to verify each new account, and using new IP with each account. When victim deposits money, there could be an investigation because of unknown IP.

Measures can be discussed, and it's hard to find the perfect system, but it does seem to me that the Intersango team could not be arsed to put any anti-fraud measures in place. Perhaps they did, but I do not know about it and can only judge by what I've heard and seen, and it's not good.

[CoinCidental]

Lots of BS can be eliminated by allowing funds in and out from only 1 bank account.
If you close your primary bank account, new account can be added and same rule applies. Probably some paperwork has to be produced to show, that account really is closed.
As simple as that. And guess what, it also adds an extra layer of security.

Does that still allow the scammer to arrange a bunch of individual sales, opening a new Intersango account for each one?  Each Intersango account only receives deposits from a single bank account that way, and business continues for the scammer as before.

Tow rules could be added to prevent this.

1. An IP can have no more than 1 account.
2. An account can only be accessed from the same IP as the signup, unless the account is verified, then the account holder could select to add more allowed ip's, or set 'no ip restrictions'.

Thus, to continue the fraud scheme, the fraudsters needed to verify each new account, and using new IP with each account. When victim deposits money, there could be an investigation because of unknown IP.

Measures can be discussed, and it's hard to find the perfect system, but it does seem to me that the Intersango team could not be arsed to put any anti-fraud measures in place. Perhaps they did, but I do not know about it and can only judge by what I've heard and seen, and it's not good.

online deposits to intersango would come from the banks ip ,the customer would innitiate it from his bank first
and they would dump the funds into intersangos

ip addresses are too easily manipulated anyway to rest security upon,especially in the uk where addresses are
dynamic and if using mobile broadband like 3g you get a differnt one every few minutes .........

thats without even using proxies or tor so the current system is fairly wide open to abuse

[Herodes]

Lots of BS can be eliminated by allowing funds in and out from only 1 bank account.
If you close your primary bank account, new account can be added and same rule applies. Probably some paperwork has to be produced to show, that account really is closed.
As simple as that. And guess what, it also adds an extra layer of security.

Does that still allow the scammer to arrange a bunch of individual sales, opening a new Intersango account for each one?  Each Intersango account only receives deposits from a single bank account that way, and business continues for the scammer as before.

Tow rules could be added to prevent this.

1. An IP can have no more than 1 account.
2. An account can only be accessed from the same IP as the signup, unless the account is verified, then the account holder could select to add more allowed ip's, or set 'no ip restrictions'.

Thus, to continue the fraud scheme, the fraudsters needed to verify each new account, and using new IP with each account. When victim deposits money, there could be an investigation because of unknown IP.

Measures can be discussed, and it's hard to find the perfect system, but it does seem to me that the Intersango team could not be arsed to put any anti-fraud measures in place. Perhaps they did, but I do not know about it and can only judge by what I've heard and seen, and it's not good.

online deposits to intersango would come from the banks ip ,the customer would innitiate it from his bank first
and they would dump the funds into intersangos

ip addresses are too easily manipulated anyway to rest security upon,especially in the uk where addresses are
dynamic and if using mobile broadband like 3g you get a differnt one every few minutes .........

thats without even using proxies or tor so the current system is fairly wide open to abuse

Naturally, I was only discussing certain measures that could be implemented, not that they would be perfect.  I don't know why you talk about bank deposit and IP-adresses. When a customer pays through a bank to Intersango, the payment goes from bank to bank, and Intersango is not part of that system. Intersango merely holds a bank account, so the only thing Intersango can try to do is to increase security on their side.

For instance if an Intersango account has an associated name, then payments from any other name should be rejected, and to attempt to prevent anyone to make several accounts, there should be some restrictions, and some of these restrictions may not be perfect (ie. IP-based), but still, having zero restrictions is not smart.

But they already have a trust issue anyway, who would send their ID to Intersango at this point ?

[Evolvex]

Dam it - just stupidly deposited some btc into my intersango account to sell for £, then I realised I couldnt get it back out so had to sell back to btc and move it out.... luckly was only a small amount otherwise I'd be truely pissed at the loss I just made.

[Monkey1]

Regardless, this is a real pain in the obvious.  The Arb opportunities are excellent at the moment but if you cant get your cash out its irrelevant!

[k3t3r]

Having read the last couple of pages of this thread I understand why PhantomCircuit did not want to link me to this thread.
Also no response from Intersango to any of the allegations made in this thread look bad.
Thanks to Steven Gornick for linking to this thread elsewhere.

from an other thread:

is there a thread for the current issue?

i searched couldn't find one but i don't want to make a new thread.

Why would you even need a thread?

Whenever there is news it will be posted to https://support.intersango.com/status

pretty promise

dont need a thread but would like a thread to ask questions. such as why you are being an arsehole?

Intersango are sitting on my GBP and i would like to make a decision should i close my account and receive my GBP by cheque or should i allow you to continue holding my cash.

Whenever there is news it will be posted to https://support.intersango.com/status

pretty promise

I cant make a serious decision based on the information in that link.

Ok, so i have some question.

I can see on the status page that transfers are not available but this does not tell me enough about what is happening.

Some basic information would be helpful: (Tansparency is good even if it means you have to admit mistakes or problems)

Have Intersango team made enquiries about a new banking account for Intersango?
Have they got any banks approval to do business with them?
If so
how far in this process are they?
How long is the process expected to take?

Are the allegations of drug dealing causing problems in establishing a new banking account?

In ToS there is provision to close account and be paid by cheque, is this still available?

[phantomcircuit]

At this point nobody from Intersango regularly reads (much less responds to) the posts on the forum.

If you want an answer to a specific question you should open a support ticket https://support.intersango.com/

[Herodes]

At this point nobody from Intersango regularly reads (much less responds to) the posts on the forum.

It's difficult to deal with criticism, huh ?

[Otoh]

An alternative for those wishing to buy btc in the UK: https://blockchain.info/wallet/deposit-pingit

[libertycapking]

prob a dumb question i know you cant do bank transfers, deposits in uk. but can you still recieve and send btc from ppl in the uk from your intersango account ?

[muyuu]

prob a dumb question i know you cant do bank transfers, deposits in uk. but can you still recieve and send btc from ppl in the uk from your intersango account ?

Sure. But why would it be limited to the UK?

[Serenata]

prob a dumb question i know you cant do bank transfers, deposits in uk. but can you still recieve and send btc from ppl in the uk from your intersango account ?

I don't see any reason not to be able to send and receive BTC from/to your Intersango bitcoin address. Those BTC could come or go from/to anyone in the whole world, since Intersango can't know what your bitcoin address might be, to limit that.

[libertycapking]

told u it was dumb thnaks for answering though cheers

[repentance]

Could somebody please explain to me exactly why Intersango should be accused of money laundering and drugsale?

Intersango was aware some time ago that there was a guy using his Intersango account to receive payments for drugs.  It's been posted about before on the board and the posts elsewhere which gave his specific account information were linked.  The Intersango account information for the individual concerned can be found in the thread Phin linked to back in July.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63877.msg1053283#msg1053283

Even if they were not aware of that information, it's still on them to ensure that people using their bank account are doing so for a lawful purpose and that they know the identities of people using their bank account.  

The legal responsibility for the use of a bank account rests with it's owner.  If I agree to put a cheque through my bank account for a friend and that cheque turns out to be stolen/forged, that comes back on me.  If someone asks me if they can keep money in my bank account and the funds they deposit into my account turn out to be the proceeds of crime, that comes back on me - that person is money laundering and I'm am facilitating it.

[Herodes]

Could somebody please explain to me exactly why Intersango should be accused of money laundering and drugsale?

Intersango was aware some time ago that there was a guy using his Intersango account to receive payments for drugs.  It's been posted about before on the board and the posts elsewhere which gave his specific account information were linked.  The Intersango account information for the individual concerned can be found in the thread Phin linked to back in July.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63877.msg1053283#msg1053283

Even if they were not aware of that information, it's still on them to ensure that people using their bank account are doing so for a lawful purpose and that they know the identities of people using their bank account.  

The legal responsibility for the use of a bank account rests with it's owner.  If I agree to put a cheque through my bank account for a friend and that cheque turns out to be stolen/forged, that comes back on me.  If someone asks me if they can keep money in my bank account and the funds they deposit into my account turn out to be the proceeds of crime, that comes back on me - that person is money laundering and I'm am facilitating it.

repetance, you use to have good posts. Following your logic, what if a person extracts money from a banks ATM, then he proceeds to purchase drugs and a gun, he sells the drugs to drug users, and he kills someone with the gun. Why do we never see a bank be held responsible for this ?

That's right, because they could not know. What if someone called the bank and said: "Joe Smith is buying drugs with money he withdraws from the ATM!" Would the bank care? And if they did not care, would they ever be punished?

I understand 'The legal responsibility for the use of a bank account rests with it's owner.', however there must be several companies that have a bank account where clients deposit money, and that money is used to purchase in-game credits or any other stuff or service the company may provide. What if a company sells shovels online? All payments goes to a bank account, and then it suddenly becomes known that a mafia group regularily purchases shovels from them, which is used to bury people that are 'eliminated'. Would the shovel company be held responsible if they didn't know? And how could it be proved that they did in fact know, but did take no action ?