Peter of England and WeaRe not a Bank

[grixit]

Careful, Peter, you're infringing on Scientology.

[afateworsethandeath]

Yes and we know how the Scientologists do not like copyright infringement.

[Angolvagyok]

There's something in his hand there. Someone with more knowledge than me can speculate on what it is,maybe it's one of the NFC things Bones was talking about. I guess he knows these cards will never be accepted anywhere, so it doesn't matter if they work or not.

[littleFred]

Yes, Peter is selling cards for £12 each. If he sells 1000, he's laughing all the way to, umm, his own bank.

It seems that instead of a dedicated terminal, retailers can use their own phones provided they have in-built card readers. (Apparently, many do.) The retailer then downloads an app from Peter. Incidentally, I wonder who wrote that software? This puts transaction details on the card and then, at some time, swaps transaction data with Peter's computer.

Obviously, retailers won't actually do this, and the cards will useful only for scraping ice off car windows.

[NYGman]

There's something in his hand there.

I would agree, there is some sort of dongle in his hand, this isn't the card making contact, something is palmed. I also want to find the dock. I can make out Liner.cc but think there at least 2 letters preceding it. I want to get the specs on the doc. Also, does it not look like an old Android 1/5/1.6/2.0 style app, at least the buttons and design look very old, compared to the new design style. Thinking this may be some re-branded old whitelable app.

[Firthy2002]

If Re is real money:

Can I have a Re tenner?

Who sets the market rate?

How is Re made?

[Bones]

I doubt there are any specs for the dock. I am guessing that it is nothing more than a charging dock for a mobile phone, like these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_no ... phone+dock

The NFC reader (that is if there is one) is in the phone

I have just rewatched the video and I think I overlooked something before. The "card" used by Peter is not made of plastic and the details on it have not been imprinted, rather they have 2d and been printed on what looks like a piece of paper of a piece of actual card.

Look at the way the WeRe Bank card bends between his thumb and finger



When you view the actual video it is easier to see than it is from this picture, but the details have been printed on it



This is a link to lots of apps that can read NFC

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=nfc&c=apps

[Bones]

Look at the bottom left of his hand, you can see he is holding something clearly in it and it is sticking out

[Gregg]

While I'm geeking out on banking, I'd add that I never get it when populist start raising the roof about the "evil QE, QE2 etc.." Quantitive Easing is just the Federal Reserve buying privately held mortgage bonds instead of privately held government bonds, something that they had never done until fairly recently. What it does is stimulate economic activity (good for pretty much everyone) while lowering short term interest rates (good for the poor, bad for the rich, trust me) and increasing the money supply (which I would argue they would have done anyhow, because buying mortgage bonds doesn't put any more new money into circulation than buying government bonds, but that's a highly technical argument that I have terribly simplified to keep from making this post 25,000 words). Some Economist, including at least one President of one of the Federal Reserve Banks, believe that the new money from QE eventually ends up as corporate profits, and this ends up disproportionately in the pockets of rich people. I, and quite a few other economists BTW, concede that the money does eventually become black ink on someone's P&L, but wonder why that's a bad thing. I would also point out that, even though you think of corporate profits as being the Hookers and Blow fund for a bunch of fat, old White Male members of the Illuminati, the fact is a very goodly share of equities, and thus corporate profits, are actually the assets backing most working class pensions, or more simply, the people who spend a lot of time whining about corporate profits.

Bottom line, if you owe more money than you have in savings (which 90% of people in the US do), QE has benefited you. Especially if you have an adjustable rate mortgage variable rate credit cards or have taken any new loans since 2009...if anyone should be bitching about it, it should be the rich and fuck you rich, whose fixed return investments have been artificially undervalued since they started doing it. Again, that's another VERY LONG post, so I won't.

[Gregg]

The "Hookers and Blow Fund" relies mostly on grants from Big Pharma that is thanking us for tricking everyone into getting their kids vaccinated for fake diseases....that and FrivPens from tax truthers.

[Jeffrey]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/8134474 ... ks-cheques

http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/uk-were ... z4CLsznYmF

Has this been linked yet?

something is palmed

Why must you guys do this? Now I'm paranoid and wondering why the entire video is out of focus and why Peter intentionally keeps the bottom of the dock out of frame.

[Bones]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/8134474 ... ks-cheques

http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/uk-were ... z4CLsznYmF

Has this been linked yet?

something is palmed

Why must you guys do this? Now I'm paranoid and wondering why the entire video is out of focus and why Peter intentionally keeps the bottom of the dock out of frame.

Well found, this is a link to the NZ ombudsman

https://bankomb.org.nz/news-and-publica ... nk-cheques

Warning about global bogus bank cheques

22 Jun 2016

The Banking Ombudsman Scheme has told government agencies and the finance sector about a complaint it investigated recently in which a New Zealander was caught out trying to use cheques from bogus UK bank ‘WeRe Bank’.

The complaint was against a New Zealand bank for refusing to honour a cheque presented by a customer wanting to use it to pay off her credit card.

“The customer was upset the bank wouldn’t honour the cheque and the relationship deteriorated to the point the bank closed the customer’s account. We were asked to look at whether the bank’s decision to refuse to bank the cheque was legal and if it could end the relationship it had with her.

“In short, our investigation revealed the ‘cheque’ was not actually a cheque because the issuing ‘bank’ was not actually a bank,” Banking Ombudsman Nicola Sladden said.

WeRe Bank was set up in the United Kingdom last year as a ’common law bank’. Customers send the bank a promissory note (an IOU) of £150,000 and then pay membership fees of £10 a month for an account. It deals in its own currency called the Re, apparently a unit of energy used to pay debt.

WeRe Bank supplies the customer with a cheque book to write ‘cheques’ drawn against the promissory note to pay debts. The cheques are not legal tender so debts aren’t paid. WeRe isn’t a registered bank or even a company, but is run online by one person and with a mobile phone number.

“This is the first complaint involving a New Zealand customer that we are aware of. Canada and the United Kingdom have dealt with cases. Because WeRe cheques are worthless, customers’ attempts to repay debt with these cheques are not successful and so people face all the risks of late payment, from additional charges to repossession.

“There will be no joy for anybody who thinks they are on to a winner with a WeRe bank cheque book. It sounds too good to be true, because it is.”

“We also determined the bank had the right to decide to end its banking relationship with its customer and had followed the correct process for doing so,” Ms Sladden said.

See our Quick Guide on Common scams targeting bank customers or for scam alert information: www.dia.govt.nz, www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/scams, www.fma.govt.nz, www.netsafe.org.nz

UK Financial Conduct Authority Warning about WeRe Bank
UK Financial Ombudsman Service WeRe Bank decision
Canadian Court of Queen’s Bench Alberta WeRe Bank decision

ends

[NYGman]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/8134474 ... ks-cheques

http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/uk-were ... z4CLsznYmF

Has this been linked yet?

something is palmed

Why must you guys do this? Now I'm paranoid and wondering why the entire video is out of focus and why Peter intentionally keeps the bottom of the dock out of frame.

The whole video is smoke and mirrors. Not real card, not real NFC/RFID, not real bank with not real money, so par for the course.

[Bones]

If you watch the clip on youtube in the slowest speed, you will see (between 30 and 35 seconds) that the name on the card ends in 'nes' (at the top right of the card as it sticks out from behind the phone), yet the name on the 'app' is "Martina Stein"



It would appear that the "card" used by Peter was this one



Proving the whole thing is a lie, as the name on the card and the name on the app is completely different.

[Chaos]

If Re is real money:

Can I have a Re tenner?

Who sets the market rate?

How is Re made?

funny you should ask as I was just pondering something myself. It appears to be completely arbitrary (not shocking since the end game is prying toxic currency from the hands of poor saps) since the following was found by TheNewSaint:

It says "I, ________ promise to pay WeRe Bank [or Order] the sum of £150,000/Re148,000".

yet we've seen that retailers can rent an alleged 'terminal' for £1 or .5 Re
does this now mean that the p notes only need to be paid back in Re 75,000?

[notorial dissent]

As bad a quality, intentional, as the video is, if that is indeed a UK RFID reader, which I think it is, then all he is doing is using a real card covered by his play card to make it look like the WeReNotABank card worked in the reader. Simple and VERY clumsy slight of hand. His cards do not have chips, way too expensive and require too much equipment, and I doubt if they have strips either, but are rather just paper or cheap printed off plastic cards. Probably something similar to what I used to be able to do on one of my printers for ID cards. I remember the cheap cards costing a penny or two a hundred back in the day.

[Jeffrey]

.cc is apparently for the Cocos Islands.

[guilty]

.cc is apparently for the Cocos Islands.

Yes it is, but lots of people register on the domain for things like 'cricket club', 'community church' etc.
In Petey's case, presumably 'complete con'

[Jeffrey]

I can't shake the feeling that there's a reason he kept the ___liner.cc website obscured.

[NYGman]

I can't shake the feeling that there's a reason he kept the ___liner.cc website obscured.

My thought too, hence my desire to decode it. Is there image software that can take several frames of blurry and render a clean image based on some algorithms? I would love to know the doc specifications, I doubt it is what he is making it out it to be. The doc itself looks made for the phone, and not generic, that, and the old style app, note the buttons, and the boxed wait spinning circle. This looks like an early android app, no material design at all.

There is something funny going on here, well besides the bad video, suspicious item in hand, obscured focus, fake bank, fake monetary unit, complete con, and I want to know more. Any experts out there who can deblur the dock web address or solve it with brute force aaliner.cc -> zzliner.cc?

My best guess, this is some old stock android phone and base, he got a deal on or was provided as a sample. It is probably keyfob/RFID system used at resorts to charge stuff to an account so you don't need a wallet. These systems allow the resort to load the cards, and use them to easily pay for items. It probably cost him next to nothing if he did buy this, and he was easily able to add his logo to the old white labeled app as it was designed to be customized and branded by the user. I bet this runs on early android hardware and software, and the phone is probably out of production long ago.