Maybe it’s not a binary thing of “your money is free or not free” but rather it is and always has been on a scale.
There have always been things it hasn’t been ok to purchase, but as per comments above, it’s the ability to enforce these whims on a global scale that’s new
Spending money on illegal things, is illegal. Spending money on dubious things, is not. I'm sure crypto exchanges and the like are illegal in some parts of the world. But it isn't clear to me whether that's the case in the UK.
The argument here, presumably, is that banks shouldn't have a policing function. You can choose to (dis)agree with that, but it's a valid argument.
This is a rather facile statement. States going back to antiquity have maintained the right to prohibit certain transactions. For example, you cannot legally buy or sell people most places in the world. Likewise the marketplace for many hazardous substances - such as explosives - is tightly controlled.
Strictly its not state since the FCA operates separately from the UK government, but they do have quite some authority in regulating financial markets. So a body regulating the market on behalf of the state is doing the prohibiting.
I don't know about the legalities, but it may well be that banks have little choice but to comply versus going against the regulator. Though Barclays' line about "we want to protect your money" is a bit much.
No they haven't really. The state control of money is very recent concept, post gold-standard. States and empires even rarely had their own coin. The opium war was less than 200 years ago. Even passports werent enforced until WW1. Control on the scale we have today was never possible , for technical reasons
State control of customs and excise pre-dates the Magna Carta, so the English state has devoted resources to chasing participants in transactions it deems unlawful for several hundred years.
Modern money laundering controls weren't possible until electronic money and record keeping, but then for related technical reasons it was much harder to evade the primitive controls they did have.
This is not very accurate. In ancient times, mints frequently adulterated the content of coins, so coins were usually worth more within the kingdom or empire than outside it.
Gold was not the ubiquitous denominator of value: silver was widely used in ancient times. Generally empires needed coins to pay armies so gold and silver mines had strategic value.
In medieval times, this was the story in Christendom, although interestingly the Islamic world was associated with mints that did not adulterate their coins, which therefore kept their value outside the Islamic world and were much sought after in China.
You are right about the recency of passport enforcement.
Yet even those empires could not enforce their subjects to use only their coins. Hence why the gold/silver value was what mattered and why some coins like the fiorin were international designs. Fiat money is what allows governments extreme control on money
In ancient times, most transactions did not involve money at all. That is the big difference to the modern era. Generally, the gold/silver value was really hard to determine, but minted coins could be more valuable than their believed metallic value: they had exchange value dealing with the regime.
I strongly recommend David Graeber's "Debt: The first 5000 years", which is an anthropological account of the changing role of debt and money around the world over history
Not only transactions. Publications too. The ability to express what you want and how you want, and distribute to a large number of people without a prior approval is a very recent thing. Some say it's a mistake.
You're confusing something that's for sale freely with something that's not. Though maybe if you add a few more pounds... But more relevant to the parent's comment; would your bank prevent your from trying to spend that pound?
Should your bank prevent you from spending that pound if the transaction is for something illicit? If your bank knows you've stolen that pound being used to purchase a legal good/service, should they allow you to spend it?
My bank is a place I store money when not using it.. so that it's not in my house or at risk of being stolen. The fact I use the bank as a utility to also spend that money is unfortunate. Thank God (Satoshi) for crypto so that I can spend my money without needing a bank to allow it.
In Australia they have moved to BSB cash transactions over $10K, with a stated goal of becoming a cashless society. I wouldn't be so sure this will always be an option.
It didn't solve it. We could have anonymous payment intermediaries today if we wanted. We don't want them because of the massive amounts of money that would be laundered through them.
The obvious answer here is that it's not up to the bank to enforce the law. They should not intentionally assist you in breaking the law, but neither should they go out of their way to discover or prevent it. How customers spend their money is none of the bank's business but if law enforcement shows up to investigate someone then they should cooperate.
Meanwhile, those who have had the pleasure of begging for bank statements with the 'contra' entries [who the money came from/went to] that allow investigators to follow the money trail, have, almost to a man, concluded that they must be in on the crime.
I am a neophyte, can someone tell me what this imply for the following scenario:
Lambda wants to buy a product X for N Bitcoin to a UK based e-seller, and the buyer do the transaction through binance, what happens?
Note that in this scenario the buyer is not in the UK.
You don't need to use Binance. Binance is one way to buy bitcoin to send to the seller but it is not the only way. If you are not in the UK it makes no material difference to anyone involved in the trade.
Bitcoin pretty much always works 100%. It is the fiat that often has problems. In this case the issue is that you can't deposit British Pounds to Binance. If you already converted all your useless fiat currency to various cryptocurrencies, you are safe and free to use your money however you like.
I pulled all of my tiny amount of funds out of Binance after they had so many bugs in their UI, especially their authentication workflow.
Not only did they have bugs, they refused to fix them. Time and time again I would send their support a chat message saying there was a bug and how to reproduce it, and they would always reply asking for my national ID.
Fuck that. If you want my ID fix your bugs first. Otherwise I don't trust you with my ID.
An subsidary that Binance bought was banned by UK financial regulators to do business in UK. Not Binance itself. This has been cleared up multiple times, but I guess if you repeat the same lie often enough people start believing it.
The regulator made it clear that Binance itself, not just the subsidiary was not licensed to pursue any regulated activity in the UK. The confusion (some would say deliberate confusion) has arisen because the application rejected was from BML, but Binance Group itself holds no authorisations to carry out regulated activities with UK customers and has effectively been banned from transacting in the UK. Here is the statement:
Binance Markets Limited is not currently permitted to undertake any regulated activities without the prior written consent of the FCA. No other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of UK authorisation, registration or licence to conduct regulated activity in the UK. The Binance Group appear to be offering UK customers a range of products and services via a website, Binance.com.
This is why UK banks have banned Binance transactions, it's not a conspiracy, it's not a lie, and you should question which news sources led you to believe it was.
One, banks do not have a responsibility to prevent payments going into institutions conducting unregulated activities. There are, literally, hundreds of these institutions doing business in the UK and Barclays is doing nothing (because it is nothing to do with them).
Two, Barclays itself is pretty much ground zero for a regulated institution behaving poorly. Their wealth management arm is notorious for retailing various kinds of unregulated schemes that self-destruct. They have a terrible reputation (although admittedly, this is now different from the UK retail bank...still, their UK retail bank doesn't have a great reputation either). In other contexts, Barclays has actually refused to comply with laws passed by the UK govt...so this is a very suspicious change in position from them.
Three, only some of the activities that Binance is conducting are regulated (i.e. those crypto derivatives which are classified as securities). The logical conclusion for this is not to ask UK banks to stop payments towards that entity (or for those banks to unilaterally decide to do that themselves) because Binance is also conducting activities which are unregulated, and those payments shouldn't be blocked (particularly because these are a payment function for some people, has the UK's payment system been shut down because some people use it for fraud? No).
This is not unusual. UK banks, for reasons known only to themselves, have begun to block payments to other companies that they don't like. Starling attempted to introduce an opt-in for gambling transactions (totally legal and regulated in the UK). There is no precedent for this. It is not the function of banks to decide who you should pay (and btw, the reason why this has started happening, imo, is because they have become liable for hacks...I have an account with a UK bank, and it is actually difficult for me to send money to anyone because there is so much compliance...and I had to get an account with another bank just so I can send money...at the bottom of everything with UK banks is money).
If competition were the reason Barclay’s blocked the transaction (it’s not) then Barclay’s would also block brokerage accounts from purchasing mutual funds advised by competitors and block retail banking customers from paying competitor credit cards via ETF. Banks “fund the competition” all the time. The transaction was blocked because Binance is breaking the law in allowing unauthorized securities transactions within the UK.
They really won't. especially if you are doing things that make them money.
They will however pass your transaction details onto the money laundering department to make sure they aren't liable for handling the proceeds of crime though.
Interesting. I spent the first half of my career trading for hedge funds, and this is the first I've heard of the PRA. Every other registration/certification/interaction I ever had was with the FCA.
Articles with misleading or exaggerated information have been flowing from the British press on this topic and is clearly (sorry to use the funny jargon) a "co-ordinated FUD campaign". I'm no fan of binance but where are the articles on lack of action on money laundering in legacy banks in the UK? Or other topics like Standard Chartered links to oil investments?
This hints at anti-competitive sentiments from a group of "traditional" investors/blatant media outlets who can't keep up with the pace of change. Instead of trusting the FT to manipulate your opinion you can now deal with economic media directly and this is best done via MetaMask or many other similar platforms.
Its more the case that the FSA (mostly the consumer regulator) has specifically warned that binance is not allowed to do financial services in the UK, because they have not got the correct permissions.
Unlike the USA, there is now a fairly healthy investment and consumer banking industry. There are now a number of challenger banks who are able to out innovate the incumbents.
This is correct but, crucially, not what was conveyed by the reporting on Binance in almost all of the major news outlets.
For example the massively misleading previous headline "Binance banned in the UK" in the FT.
The FCA ruling is not really the problem imo, i'm more reacting to the financial press such as FT and the Economist. Cooling down overleveraged small traders about to lose it all on some bad investment is definitely a good thing. However, intentionally misleading people via major newsites including the BBC is not.
It isn't about being anticompetitive, it is about regulation, to protect the average consumer from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous people touting scams, and also to protect the government, as the government guarantees deposits up to £85k per person per institution. 'Retail' banks are required to ring-fence certain deposit funds from their more risky investments in an attempt to provide a buffer in the event of another financial crisis and to avoid the need for the government to bail out another bank like Northern Rock. This is on top of the usual requirements for a banking license, rules on capital leverage and the many and varied other rules banks must comply with.
Banks are required to and have large audit functions and have automated systems for flagging potential fraud to these teams, and are independently audited as well. This is why they enforce rules like KYC and so on. No system is perfect and certainly some level of money laundering will always slip through, but the idea they are not acting at all is pure fiction, as the regulator has teeth.
As sibling comments have pointed out, plenty of 'challenger banks' exist in the UK, e.g. Monzo, although they are not the only one, innovating just fine within the confines of 'legacy' banking.
Given the scam that is tether, and the atrocious transaction throughput all cryptocurrencies vs say just the Visa network, plus the fact that through Faster Payments I can move significant sums to any UK account within seconds, I am curious why you feel UK Financial institutions are not keeping up with 'the pace of change', particularly when bitcoin types are shilling a system that reinvents all the problems in the financial system regulation has been enacted to protect against, with no backing and terrible volatility?
The "average consumer" should be educated on different types of financial ownership by the state run media/financial press: custodial-legacy (Barclays), custodial-challenger (Revolut), defacto-custodial(arguably all centralized crypto exchanges..e.g. you can move the crypto off it), non-custodial (Meta Mask) etc. Then they should be allowed to risk or derisk as they see fit by choosing the most competitive option on the market. IMO stability in the economy comes from having a large number of prosumer types who can take activist positions when they need to, simply by quickly switching provider and getting a better deal or supporting something in their interest or to their taste. This is especially important considering the real alternative DeFi provides versus bank based lending and slippery financial constructs endemic in that industry (wasn't it the latter that caused 2008? Nearly any alternative is better than that situation.).
Other points:
- KYC exists on most of the major crypto exchanges with Coinbase and Gemini doing this properly. Proof that it works in the long term is not there yet of course.
- Fraud mostly happens through the traditional banking system. It's more complicated and embedded in how things are done but it's still fraud. The BBC on Barclays role in 2008: "At its worst, for every £100 the banks had lent, if as little as £3 or £4 failed to be repaid, it might be enough to bankrupt them."
- I struggle to see the sharp differences between a Coinbase or Binance (ok minus the overleveraged trading on the latter) and a Revolut or Monzo. Both allow different ways of accessing crypto within custodial model, have KYC, have a debit card. The only difference is how they have each responded to poorly formulated regulatory frameworks (2-3 years ago). Once again, binance sucks in so many ways but there's still something incredibly misleading about the way it is covered.
- Tether is no good but Dai is an excellent alternative. In any case, Tether operates similarly to many banks where 1:1 shadowing of money held/money deposited is obviously never going to work out as a profitable business model. Tether is not viable long term but neither are most banks then.
These things aside, my main overall point here is that:
- UK financial institutions should protect consumers but should not create information asymmetries (via state run media and highly influential financial press) that heavily predispose a certain outcome in the favour of a tiny subset of companies innovating in this space. For example, FUD focussed on a single company that is directly competing with Revolut or Monzo. This is anticompetitive in my view and there is such a lack of clarity on what is acceptable that it is likely to stifle any innovation going forward.
I think educating the average consumer is a good and lofty ideal that we should aspire to. I think that in practice it is not realistic. The truth is that around 99 percent of people would prefer regulations that protect their interests to the time, effort, and cognitive overhead of educating themselves about the arcane workings of banking and finance. Ultimately it is probably more just to cater to their interests.
I say this in every thread with these sorts of issues: Not your keys, not your crypto. Keep this stuff locally and keep encrypted, non-local backups of your wallets or your wallet seed. That's the best way and insulates you against all these regulatory shenanigans.
Hopefully one day there will be a crypto environment rich enough, where states can't hinder the freedom of crypto by putting barriers up between the worlds of crypto and fiat.
For now there are other exchanges you can send money to, to buy crypto. I would then still withdraw it to local storage immediately.
The same bank that told regulators to do one when the UK introduced ringfencing (splitting investment from retail banks). I remember there was a story in a paper that someone from the BoE went to talk to management, the BoE told them that Parliament passed a law saying they had to split, and Barclays responded by implying they wouldn't split and would take down the UK economy if they were forced to...you cannot make this up. It is like the Devil being made Pope.
Correct. And they are now lobbying aggressively for the ringfence to be removed again (their investment bank is not regarded as economically sustainable as an independent operation).
I would argue yes and no (for the split). They created two separate legal structures under Barclays PLC, since they had to (https://home.barclays/who-we-are/ring-fencing-explained/) but as a consumer would you notice? The branding remains the same and the consumer probably doesn't notice when interacting with Barclays.
Can't comment on the investment bank situation, but I know they went through a few CEOs a few years back :)
I think they did what they were required to do under the law. They don't have to become two wholly separate companies, just ensure that the investment bank going under doesn't jeopardise the solvency of the retail banking operation. HSBC has done similar.
Yes, after their executive team left. And why did you expect to hear about it? Do you work in financial services? Most of these stories don't appear in newspapers because the public isn't that interested in the implementation of financial regulation (in this case though, there was actually an op-ed in the Telegraph from one of the Chairman who was forced out which basically made explicit what they were reported to have said to the BoE).
I do work in FS (actually I'm unemployed at the moment). You're right though, these things are rarely reported so I would expect to hear even as an insider. I'm surprised Barclays were ballsy enough to outright refuse. Normally they just grip ane moan and don't do it and get infinite extensions...
>> The London-based bank on Monday notified clients of the prohibition on debit and credit payments to Binance, which it said would start immediately and was intended “to help to keep your money safe”.
They keep my money safe by holding it securely, not by deciding how I use it. That’s the regulators job and they haven’t banned Binance, just a specific part of the product. Where does this end? If I try to width draw cash will I need to tell Barclays how I intend to spend it?
In the US major banks will sometimes ask you that if you withdraw a large sum or take out a cashiers check. I always tell them it’s not their business and I get back generic lines about how it is for my safety or they’re just trying to help.
Community bank near me does it because they had a number of folks who were getting scammed via some scam calls (family member in jail scam, fake IRS scam, obvious scam 'investments' and so on).
They've stopped a handful of scams just by asking the customer what they're doing. For a few of the folks involved the amount of losses would have been devastating financially and certainly emotionally (they're elderly with very limited finances).
I know the usual 'the bank wants to sell you something' lines will come up, but it's not hard to just say no, and the teller there might not be Snidely Whiplash...
This is all a psychology game and it works better if you understand their psychology. Banks do not care. They don’t want you to make them care. It is also true that they employ compliance officers whose job is to care and be skittish. So don't say drugs, terrorist financing or poorly understood things like crypto. Make up anything else such as you are filling up a pool to swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck.
For more leniency, use a bank that took a “criminal non prosecution agreement”, like Wells Fargo, where they remember that Compliance Officers are at-will employees too.
You’re free to withdraw your money from Barclay’s, without needing to tell them anything about what you’re going to do with it, and find your own way to send it to Binance.
I see you guys have never had your bank call you and ask what you are doing with all that cash you are withdrawling, for their report for the government. I should've just said 'strippers'.
That’s the government’s rule though, not your bank’s. And if that’s too much information to provide, you can still not use a bank and instead stuff cash under your mattress.
Barclays once blocked all of my company accounts for a week but never told me. Eventually I found out when stuff bounced. When I rang up to find out why they (no joking) asked me to explain why I had transactions from something called "Federal Reserve" (it was part of a US government contract).
I explained why. Then they asked me to explain who this "Federal Reserve" was. I laughed thinking they were joking...Then found myself having to actually explain it. They then had me on hold for ten minutes when they checked with their manager...
"Post-westphalian free market blocked from conducting transfers with financial institution investigated for potential top down fraud case related to the 2008 financial crisis"
Seems like a pretty sound decision, in theory. But in practice, this sort of thing seems to stoke the flames of antiestablishmentarianism. People feel like banks can't be trusted, which means cryptocurrencies gain more popularity (environmental concerns be damned, apparently), which inevitably leads to more shady crypto exchanges, which end up fucking up, which leads to more banks blocking transfers ... and on it goes.
92 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadThere have always been things it hasn’t been ok to purchase, but as per comments above, it’s the ability to enforce these whims on a global scale that’s new
The argument here, presumably, is that banks shouldn't have a policing function. You can choose to (dis)agree with that, but it's a valid argument.
I don't know about the legalities, but it may well be that banks have little choice but to comply versus going against the regulator. Though Barclays' line about "we want to protect your money" is a bit much.
Modern money laundering controls weren't possible until electronic money and record keeping, but then for related technical reasons it was much harder to evade the primitive controls they did have.
Gold was not the ubiquitous denominator of value: silver was widely used in ancient times. Generally empires needed coins to pay armies so gold and silver mines had strategic value.
In medieval times, this was the story in Christendom, although interestingly the Islamic world was associated with mints that did not adulterate their coins, which therefore kept their value outside the Islamic world and were much sought after in China.
You are right about the recency of passport enforcement.
I strongly recommend David Graeber's "Debt: The first 5000 years", which is an anthropological account of the changing role of debt and money around the world over history
What this bank does is trying to prevent crime before it may or may not happen.
This is sick and dystopian.
What's next, are we going to arrest people because they have cutlery and may or may not do something with it. That's preposterous!
Can I assume we have a deal?
Just think this freedom has existed for thousands of years without the need to burn up the planet with meaningless computations as a prerequisite.
Yes, because I stole it.
https://archive.md/587ZH
Not only did they have bugs, they refused to fix them. Time and time again I would send their support a chat message saying there was a bug and how to reproduce it, and they would always reply asking for my national ID.
Fuck that. If you want my ID fix your bugs first. Otherwise I don't trust you with my ID.
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/consumer-warning-bi...
The regulator made it clear that Binance itself, not just the subsidiary was not licensed to pursue any regulated activity in the UK. The confusion (some would say deliberate confusion) has arisen because the application rejected was from BML, but Binance Group itself holds no authorisations to carry out regulated activities with UK customers and has effectively been banned from transacting in the UK. Here is the statement:
Binance Markets Limited is not currently permitted to undertake any regulated activities without the prior written consent of the FCA. No other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of UK authorisation, registration or licence to conduct regulated activity in the UK. The Binance Group appear to be offering UK customers a range of products and services via a website, Binance.com.
This is why UK banks have banned Binance transactions, it's not a conspiracy, it's not a lie, and you should question which news sources led you to believe it was.
One, banks do not have a responsibility to prevent payments going into institutions conducting unregulated activities. There are, literally, hundreds of these institutions doing business in the UK and Barclays is doing nothing (because it is nothing to do with them).
Two, Barclays itself is pretty much ground zero for a regulated institution behaving poorly. Their wealth management arm is notorious for retailing various kinds of unregulated schemes that self-destruct. They have a terrible reputation (although admittedly, this is now different from the UK retail bank...still, their UK retail bank doesn't have a great reputation either). In other contexts, Barclays has actually refused to comply with laws passed by the UK govt...so this is a very suspicious change in position from them.
Three, only some of the activities that Binance is conducting are regulated (i.e. those crypto derivatives which are classified as securities). The logical conclusion for this is not to ask UK banks to stop payments towards that entity (or for those banks to unilaterally decide to do that themselves) because Binance is also conducting activities which are unregulated, and those payments shouldn't be blocked (particularly because these are a payment function for some people, has the UK's payment system been shut down because some people use it for fraud? No).
This is not unusual. UK banks, for reasons known only to themselves, have begun to block payments to other companies that they don't like. Starling attempted to introduce an opt-in for gambling transactions (totally legal and regulated in the UK). There is no precedent for this. It is not the function of banks to decide who you should pay (and btw, the reason why this has started happening, imo, is because they have become liable for hacks...I have an account with a UK bank, and it is actually difficult for me to send money to anyone because there is so much compliance...and I had to get an account with another bank just so I can send money...at the bottom of everything with UK banks is money).
They will however pass your transaction details onto the money laundering department to make sure they aren't liable for handling the proceeds of crime though.
(Technically the FCA is one of the UK financial regulators, the other being the PRA, but it's the one that deals most with consumer-facing issues.)
This hints at anti-competitive sentiments from a group of "traditional" investors/blatant media outlets who can't keep up with the pace of change. Instead of trusting the FT to manipulate your opinion you can now deal with economic media directly and this is best done via MetaMask or many other similar platforms.
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/consumer-warning-bi...
Unlike the USA, there is now a fairly healthy investment and consumer banking industry. There are now a number of challenger banks who are able to out innovate the incumbents.
The FCA ruling is not really the problem imo, i'm more reacting to the financial press such as FT and the Economist. Cooling down overleveraged small traders about to lose it all on some bad investment is definitely a good thing. However, intentionally misleading people via major newsites including the BBC is not.
Banks are required to and have large audit functions and have automated systems for flagging potential fraud to these teams, and are independently audited as well. This is why they enforce rules like KYC and so on. No system is perfect and certainly some level of money laundering will always slip through, but the idea they are not acting at all is pure fiction, as the regulator has teeth.
As sibling comments have pointed out, plenty of 'challenger banks' exist in the UK, e.g. Monzo, although they are not the only one, innovating just fine within the confines of 'legacy' banking.
Given the scam that is tether, and the atrocious transaction throughput all cryptocurrencies vs say just the Visa network, plus the fact that through Faster Payments I can move significant sums to any UK account within seconds, I am curious why you feel UK Financial institutions are not keeping up with 'the pace of change', particularly when bitcoin types are shilling a system that reinvents all the problems in the financial system regulation has been enacted to protect against, with no backing and terrible volatility?
Other points:
- KYC exists on most of the major crypto exchanges with Coinbase and Gemini doing this properly. Proof that it works in the long term is not there yet of course.
- Fraud mostly happens through the traditional banking system. It's more complicated and embedded in how things are done but it's still fraud. The BBC on Barclays role in 2008: "At its worst, for every £100 the banks had lent, if as little as £3 or £4 failed to be repaid, it might be enough to bankrupt them."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51593639
- I struggle to see the sharp differences between a Coinbase or Binance (ok minus the overleveraged trading on the latter) and a Revolut or Monzo. Both allow different ways of accessing crypto within custodial model, have KYC, have a debit card. The only difference is how they have each responded to poorly formulated regulatory frameworks (2-3 years ago). Once again, binance sucks in so many ways but there's still something incredibly misleading about the way it is covered.
- Tether is no good but Dai is an excellent alternative. In any case, Tether operates similarly to many banks where 1:1 shadowing of money held/money deposited is obviously never going to work out as a profitable business model. Tether is not viable long term but neither are most banks then.
These things aside, my main overall point here is that:
- UK financial institutions should protect consumers but should not create information asymmetries (via state run media and highly influential financial press) that heavily predispose a certain outcome in the favour of a tiny subset of companies innovating in this space. For example, FUD focussed on a single company that is directly competing with Revolut or Monzo. This is anticompetitive in my view and there is such a lack of clarity on what is acceptable that it is likely to stifle any innovation going forward.
Can't comment on the investment bank situation, but I know they went through a few CEOs a few years back :)
Google says they were the first UK bank to complete the process in 2018.
They keep my money safe by holding it securely, not by deciding how I use it. That’s the regulators job and they haven’t banned Binance, just a specific part of the product. Where does this end? If I try to width draw cash will I need to tell Barclays how I intend to spend it?
They're happy to send you your money. They just don't want to have any relationship with Binance.
They've stopped a handful of scams just by asking the customer what they're doing. For a few of the folks involved the amount of losses would have been devastating financially and certainly emotionally (they're elderly with very limited finances).
I know the usual 'the bank wants to sell you something' lines will come up, but it's not hard to just say no, and the teller there might not be Snidely Whiplash...
For more leniency, use a bank that took a “criminal non prosecution agreement”, like Wells Fargo, where they remember that Compliance Officers are at-will employees too.
Turns out if you do that, you'll also need to build your own AWS, your own DNS, your own payment systems, your own internet providers.
No, it doesn't work this way.
I explained why. Then they asked me to explain who this "Federal Reserve" was. I laughed thinking they were joking...Then found myself having to actually explain it. They then had me on hold for ten minutes when they checked with their manager...
#liteCASH $CASH https://www.lite-cash.com
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51593639