evolucian wrote
Was it with Neteller? Cos they issue cards too. I agree that anything involving a credit card (not just gambling) has a run in with fraud. So these sites take extra precautions and ask for verifications like ID book, utility bills for address verification and when you want to withdraw they require bank statements with your address/name on it so that they know its going to your account. For a site that hosts the world championship of online poker and has some of the big names in poker on it, I have no qualms in giving my details to them because they risk way too much money if they do anything bad.
Not neteller, but I can't say (at least till Jan 2013) - coz of Non-disclosure & Restraint of trade agreements I was obliged to sign. Seriously limited local employment opourtunities! So I employed myself for 2012 :?
I reckon the vast majority of online gambling guys are legit - they would have to be, because to transact on the big aggregator's networks you don't want to attract a high level of transaction disputes from consumers. It's expensive (labour intensive) to process disputes and it damages the aggregators branding (MC and Visa are militant!), generally gambling merchants who attract to many disputes are kicked off the network and crawl back as another merchant type (E.g. Supermarkets) or try and use a paypal/neteller scenario to cover their tracks.
Generally you have the backing of the aggregator (MC/Visa, etc) for transaction disputes, so it's relatively safe for the consumer who takes reasonable precautions (E.g. 3D secure on the MC debit cards) or whom uses a credit card and checks their statements within 30 days of originating transaction (ideally it should reflect within 5 days).
But...Here's the wierd thing, a transaction could be processed (or disputed!) up to two years after you thought it was. So you'd always need to keep an eye on your statements - whether it's a debit or credit card in any EFT scenario (ATM's process immediately). It's rare, but I've seen it happen. You'd think your bank would alert you, but there's over 2Billion USD transacted on the MC network every month, so shift sometimes happens (Too easily, imho - I've had to personally dispute a few transactions, dodgy internet merchants charged over 20K on my credit card and unless I checked my statement and demanded a dispute, the charges would have stuck).
When it comes to governments & fraud, their main concern is money laundering (and as you correctly reckoned, tax evasion), but forex control was also high on the list. E.g. Zimbabwe didn't like their expensive US dollars to be spent too liberally in SA, so we had to do a lot of reporting to their Reserve Bank, tons 'o paperwork.
Norman86 wrote
ah crap... losing a great guitarist here ☹
+1, sadly :'( - He'll be bach ?
