I actually think that most of the items in the Patriot Act dealing with finance must have been made by people who don't have a clue about the business. Point in case: We [ www.cyfrocash.com ] used to buy endorsed, third party cheques to allow foreigners to easier do business in the US and vice-versa. Things went well and we kept records of transaction details, although as a non-bank we don't have any reporting obligations. Then came the Patriot [Parrot?] Act and our bank informed us that they can't accept third party cheques anymore - even if we had been dealing with individual clients for years, had photo IDs on record, met some of them in person, etc.
This would have cast the 'Die' for about 70% of our business. But, guess what? It's perfectly all right to present cheques that are made out to us of course. So, now our clients ask their customers to make all cheques out directly to us, send them to us, we cash them and forward the money. Things got much easier for us... And you know, they shot themselves in the foot with a large calibre. This is why: Before we had traceable records of everything. Now, under the new rules there is no third party paper that mentions the name of the recepient. Meaning, to proof wrongdoing of any of our customers the GOV now only has circumstancial evidence, rather than actual records. It's insane, but the new rules would have turned a legit cheque buying service into, well, a money laundry heaven - if we didn't have an eye on unusual transactions - which, as a non-bank we are not obliged to do unless the total value of single transactions exceeds $10,000 [and even then its arguable how far our obligations actually go]. To get to the point: As long as rules are being tightened for legit businesses and at the same time create huge openings for criminal elements the people who tighten the rules are building themselves springboards for much worse rules to come... The only thing that keeps operations clean is the goodwill of the operators or processes complicated enough for criminals to bother. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
