Jan 24 (Reuters) - Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their payment networks from laundering proceeds from child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the popular website OnlyFans, according to allegations in a previously undisclosed whistleblower complaint filed with the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
The whistleblower, a senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries, said the two giant card companies knew their networks were being used to pay for illegal content on the porn-driven site since at least 2021, and accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
The complaint was filed in January 2023 with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the U.S. Justice and Homeland Security departments, the whistleblower said.
The complaint said that the whistleblower and other anti-trafficking experts, including U.S. federal agents, alerted Visa and Mastercard to unlawful content on OnlyFans in a series of calls in 2021 and 2022. The federal agents corroborated the presence of child sexual abuse material on OnlyFans, the complaint said.
Money laundering is incredibly complex now, but it’s still pretty dang hard to hide, especially if you’re a credit card company with just a metric shitload of data with a ton of available compute to find it.
I think the important bit isn’t necessarily that they were hosting content, but funneling money - which is an important distinction. The content may not have been hosted there, but the money was still being funneled through there to pay for illegal content.
An analogy, occasionally you see something make the rounds from facebook marketplace. “Half eaten mcdonalds sandwich. $600”. Everyone laughs and says how stupid is that - but is it? Or is it a completely legal transaction if someone buys it. It’s just that what you don’t know is that on another platform they were asking to buy drugs, and said “To transfer the money go buy the half eaten sandwhich on FB”.
If FB knows that’s happening and doesn’t stop it, that’s on them because they’re allowing money laundering to happen.
OF in this case probably didn’t even host any content - but they probably knew that money was being funneled for other activities and it’s on them to stop it. Take it as a lesson folks, if you let money flow through your site (even a completely above board site) between two parties - you’re at risk of something like this.
You’re describing the internet though. If two people meet in a public space and conspire to commit a crime, the public space isn’t fined. In the same way that if two people on Lemmy meet and then conspire to commit a crime, the space shouldn’t be fined.
If OTOH the platform owner was made aware and didn’t take action, then yes that would be aiding a crime.
It’s not about the messaging - the money flowed through OF. That’s the illegal part, OF allowing money to transfer through them for crimes makes them complicit. That’s why FinCEN is involved.
Person A wants to buy something illegal from Person B.
Person A cannot send money directly to Person B, as it leaves a paper trail/it may be illegal/sanctions/there are also lists of known bad actors
Person B tells Person A to instead buy <<some product>> on a random site, in this case OF
Person A buys the product, money flowing to OF, looks like a normal transaction
Person B receives money from OF, also appears to be a normal transaction, and there is no direct link between A and B except hidden behind the scenes through OF’s bank account (which has millions of other transactions, none of them linked)
Finance has rules about keeping logs about what money was transferred from who to who, why, when, and for what. If those logs are not meticulous and precise, they will come in and shut you down. In this case we see Visa and others also get wind, they want nothing to do with feds coming in and shutting them down (remember if they’re aware of it and allow it to continue they are also liable), and that’s how we get here.
Source: I worked FinTech at an exchange for several years, and we were sued by multiple agencies for things we weren’t even aware of (years after they even happened). If you want to pay people out through your system, first hire a team of lawyers.
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Money laundering is incredibly complex now, but it’s still pretty dang hard to hide, especially if you’re a credit card company with just a metric shitload of data with a ton of available compute to find it.
I think the important bit isn’t necessarily that they were hosting content, but funneling money - which is an important distinction. The content may not have been hosted there, but the money was still being funneled through there to pay for illegal content.
An analogy, occasionally you see something make the rounds from facebook marketplace. “Half eaten mcdonalds sandwich. $600”. Everyone laughs and says how stupid is that - but is it? Or is it a completely legal transaction if someone buys it. It’s just that what you don’t know is that on another platform they were asking to buy drugs, and said “To transfer the money go buy the half eaten sandwhich on FB”.
If FB knows that’s happening and doesn’t stop it, that’s on them because they’re allowing money laundering to happen.
OF in this case probably didn’t even host any content - but they probably knew that money was being funneled for other activities and it’s on them to stop it. Take it as a lesson folks, if you let money flow through your site (even a completely above board site) between two parties - you’re at risk of something like this.
You’re describing the internet though. If two people meet in a public space and conspire to commit a crime, the public space isn’t fined. In the same way that if two people on Lemmy meet and then conspire to commit a crime, the space shouldn’t be fined. If OTOH the platform owner was made aware and didn’t take action, then yes that would be aiding a crime.
It’s not about the messaging - the money flowed through OF. That’s the illegal part, OF allowing money to transfer through them for crimes makes them complicit. That’s why FinCEN is involved.
Finance has rules about keeping logs about what money was transferred from who to who, why, when, and for what. If those logs are not meticulous and precise, they will come in and shut you down. In this case we see Visa and others also get wind, they want nothing to do with feds coming in and shutting them down (remember if they’re aware of it and allow it to continue they are also liable), and that’s how we get here.
Source: I worked FinTech at an exchange for several years, and we were sued by multiple agencies for things we weren’t even aware of (years after they even happened). If you want to pay people out through your system, first hire a team of lawyers.
I’d just open a church if I wanted to launder money.
“Boy cash donations were way up this week. Praise the flying spaghetti monster! Our sauce pot overflowith.”