Two Brevard County men accused of catering to criminals moving money
Jim Leusner | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted April 27, 2007, 4:14 PM EDT
Two Brevard County men and two digital currency businesses they operated in Melbourne have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., accused of running an unregulated financial network which catered to criminals moving money.
A four-count indictment handed up Tuesday and made public today charged E-Gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. and owners Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, of Satellite Beach; Reid A. Jackson, of Melbourne; and Barry K. Downey, of Woodbine, Maryland. Each was charged with conspiring to lauder monetary instruments; conspriracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business; operating an unlicensed money transmitting business; and transmitting money without a license in Washington, D.C.
The indictment was announced by Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and the Justice Department. Officials said the three will surrender in Washington at a later date.
"Douglas Jackson and his associates operated a sophisticated and widespread international money remitting business, unsupervised and unregulated by any entity in the world, which allowed for anonymous transfers of value at a click of a mouse," Taylor said. "Not surprisingly, criminals of every stripe gravitated to E-Gold as a place to move their money with impunity. As alleged in the indictment, the defendants in this case knowingly allowed them to do so and profited from their crimes."
A call to E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve offices was not immediately returned this afternoon.
The probe was the result of a 2 1/2-year probe spearheaded by the U.S. Secret Service in Orlando, along with IRS, FBI and other state and local police agencies. Federal prosecutors also obtained a restraining order and seized millions of dollars in 58 accounts believed to be used in money laundering and the operating of unlicensed money transactions.
The indictment charged that "EGold" digital currency functioned as an alternative payment system and was purportedly backed by stored physical gold. It charged that customers needed only to provide an e-mail address to open an account and that no other customer information was verified. The indictment accused some customers of using fictitious names such as "Mickey Mouse," "Donald Duck" and "No Name" and could conduct international transactions without any government regulation.
Because of that, it became a "highly favored method of payment" by investment scammers, credit card and identity fraud thieves and sellers of Internet child pornography, authorities said.
E-Gold hit with criminal charges
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Demosthenes
- Grand Exalted Keeper of Esoterica
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E-Gold hit with criminal charges
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Joey Smith
- Infidel Enslaver
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Green Lantern
E-gold responds.......
e-gold® Founder Denies Criminal Charges
April 30, 2007
Melbourne, FL
On April 24, 2007, a Federal Grand Jury handed down an indictment charging e-gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc., and the Directors of both companies with money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter business, and conspiracies to commit both offenses.
Dr. Douglas Jackson, Chairman and Founder of e-gold, speaking on behalf of his fellow Directors and both companies vigorously denies the charges, taking particular exception to the allegations that either company ever turned a blind eye to payments for child pornography or for the sale of stolen identity and credit card information.
Dr. Jackson states, "With regard to child pornography, the government knows full well that their allegations are false, yet they highlight these irresponsible and purposely damaging statements in order to demonize e-gold in the eyes of the public. During the Inquisition, accusations of witchcraft and heresy were used to sanctify torture and seizures of property. In post 9-11 America, child porn and terrorism serve as the denunciations of choice. e-gold, however, as a matter of incontrovertible fact, is the most effective of all online payment systems in detecting and interdicting abuse of its system for child pornography related payments. e-gold Ltd. is a founding member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's (NCMEC) Financial Coalition to Eliminate Child Pornography. e-gold is the only member institution to demonstrate with hard, auditable data a dramatic reduction of such payments to virtually zero, while billions of child porn dollars continue to flow through other (heavily regulated) payment systems. [Most members, that is, all the banks and credit card associations are utterly unable to even provide an estimate of the volume of such payments processed by their systems. eBay's PayPal subsidiary, who may have the ability to make such a determination, has refused to do so and has indicated they destroy payment records after two years.] What is worse, until August 2005 when NCMEC courageously broke ranks with US law enforcement agencies and began directly notifying e-gold of criminal sites via the CyberTipline, component agencies of the US Department of Justice purposely concealed their knowledge of child pornography abuses from e-gold's investigators, subordinating actual crime fighting to a policy agenda designed to dirty up e-gold."
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Monty Cantsin
Keep an eye on http://e-gold.com/stats.html - I think EG's gold reserves are dwindling. Before the indictment the figures never changed much, but recently I read somewhere that they dropped from 3.49MG to 2.97 and then to 2.79.
Plus, there's also this from Money Net News:
http://www.moneynetnews.com/articles/54 ... -Gold.html
Plus, there's also this from Money Net News:
http://www.moneynetnews.com/articles/54 ... -Gold.html
US Government Forces E-gold Redemptions - Seizes Gold
In an unprecedented move on or just before Wednesday May 9th, 2007, the United States of America has forced Omnipay et al E-gold to redeem all the gold backing the 58 previously frozen accounts owned by e-gold, 1mdc, icegold and a handful of other exchangers and customers to be liquidated effective immediately to a us dollar account owned by the federal government.
According to the reduction in the gold bar list, the bar count
has dropped by 48 bars of approximately 400 oz each between May 3, and May 9.
This redemption totals USD $11.357 Million.
Date Gold Grams ($ Value)
03-05-07 3,489,436 77.015 Million
09-05-07 2,974,871 65.668 Milllion
Gold Bars value Sold: USD 11.357 Million
MoneyNetNews has learned from a reliable source that e-gold has been ordered to hand over a fresh copy of the customer database when the redemption is completed.
MoneyNetNews cannot confirm if all of the 48 bars redeemed account for the forfeiture action of the United States. It is possible that a part of this activity can be accounted for by increased volatility in e-gold's general market.
Not only was E-gold / Omnipay ordered to convert gold (and silver) holdings in the seized accounts into US Dollars, but that included their own (Omnipay's, and E-gold's) frozen (seized) accounts. This will ultimately result is great losses of value over time even if the victims of the seizures are found to be innocent due to the in progress bull market in gold and bear
market in US Dollars.
The seizure order appears to be unrelated to the criminal case in progress against E-gold and OmniPay in that the seizure of the accounts by the government was done under a (separate) civil case, for which the Government has yet to file
anything.
By doing so, the government was able to seize accounts without having to reveal anything to the owners of the accounts themselves. By law, the government has 30, and possibly up to 90 days to file a complaint.
Until the government civil filing is done, none of the victims of the seizures can possibly do anything to defend themselves, not even obtain information as to why their accounts have been seized, or what they would have done wrong.
None of the victims of the account seizures have been advised of anything officially at this time.
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Green Lantern
Perhaps Jim Norman will reveal that he has a $200 million E-gold account that needs to be redeemed with thousands in fees he will collect from his investors through the Team?By doing so, the government was able to seize accounts without having to reveal anything to the owners of the accounts themselves. By law, the government has 30, and possibly up to 90 days to file a complaint.
Until the government civil filing is done, none of the victims of the seizures can possibly do anything to defend themselves, not even obtain information as to why their accounts have been seized, or what they would have done wrong.
None of the victims of the account seizures have been advised of anything officially at this time.
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BarazCarles