Second Life, Entropia Universe, and Money Laundering

Except they specifically do NOT break the transaction trail

I have many fake accounts in Entropia and i use Ukash to transfer untraceable money from Europe to my brother in the USA.

Thought you’d like this on the general Second Life Media front:
http://www.citynews.ca/blogs/blogs_4075.aspx
Watch them stumble into the “interesting” aspects of Second Life more than once. It made me laugh.

I agree that this could be a potential issue, but I don’t think it will have that large of an impact on the MMORPG industry or in general, as there always have been, and will continue to always be, inventive ways of laundering money, and electronically it is easier to trace than most people think. Generally there are records somewhere, no matter how secure most people think.

Atleast in Entropia Universe all transactions are recorded, so money can be traced back to its source or destination.

MindArk does an extensive transaction review prior to approving any withdraw. They will know about any consistent ingame transfers between players. They will know the IP address of the player who originated the transfer. And because bank accounts are required to withdraw money - they will know everything on the withdraw end.

Hard to hide money there.

Aw, Entropia is a nice game. I just hope that it won’t be used to facilitate illegal activities such as money laundering.

I agree with you about MindArk, I wrote an article on Entropia Universe about one month ago on DigitalMoneyWorld.com and in it I half joked about “”I wonder if they will have an Anti-Virtual-Money Laundering Policy?”"

Well about an hour or two after publishing, I received an email from one of their top guys discussing their AML policy and the lengths they go to watch out for unusual money patterns and more. I was totally impressed they were already on top of anything that could potentially go wrong with the movement of their virtual money into national currency. I have no doubt they are NOT being used by any large criminals to move dirty cash. I can’t speak for Second Life or Linden.
Mark Herpel
PS. Good post and discussion above.

i doubt its profitabel for money laundring, to much hassle, and everyhtign is tracable, both the origin of the money as to where it ends up.
a more intresting discussion perhaps is taxes.
some gamers earn money or see their investements grow in value.
so its sorta income or a possible revenue investment.
Will be intresting how different countries aplly their laws on such a global happening.
i game in EU and trust my money there 100% , its a kick ass gaming experience and the money aspect adds fun and excitment, making it count more to a satisfying experience. in the 3 years i play there, i never ran itno trouble with my deposits, or money moved in or out.
and also its the first game ever to capture me for such a logn period

greetz CBB

ps if u ever try entropia, goto a place called atlas haven and ask for me, we can chat there and i ll answer all u liek to know

I’ve also thought about this in terms of hiding money. Anyone going through a divorce? “Honestly… I spent $10,000 on that game last month” www.entropiatools.com

You can’t “hide” money in the game because there is no way to put “Cash” into it. They only accept a “transfer” type transaction-Even with systems like Ukash you have to show ID’s and have limits on the size of your cash over counter transaction to them which they turn around and transfer to the game. There is always a record which only makes the trail longer but still shows the trail. Divorce courts in the US take into consideration an asset like your Avatar and his/her wealth. You would be required to either “Buyout” the spouse or disolve the Avatar and his/her wealth and split the value in accordance with the divorce courts decision. MA does share all logs/information with law enforcement/court orders when requested by these entities-they also lock accounts that engage in suspicious activities as well multiple accounts from the same IP/Mac addresses. Heck they locked a whole country so it would be a very poor decision on someones part to try and exploit EU for laundering purposes. All that aside you are a very foolish launderer if you trust your money in the hands of someone who has nothing to lose by calling you out and that is exactly the position MA is in.

Yes, all true Gandi, but what you dont realize is, most courts wont ever even think about such a thing as an online avatar and its worth durring a divorce. Seriously half of the old pricks dont know anything about it. Yes it is recorded, and stored every transaction, but if they dont know about it, how do they take it into consideration…….they dont.

I havent taken any money out of Entropia partly because its *&^% fustrating and ive since gone to wow and am very happy there, but Second Life I played a lot for a long time and had a buisness which made nice money, bout 500bucks a month give or take, it takes some time to get your withdraw limit up to a sizeable amount on sl, but if you sell rediculously priced items or extremely cheap ones and thus gain a huge income, it wont look like money laundering even if it is.

Money in there can be traced pretty easily but those tracks could go to dead ends, so sl is probably more at risk but only if the crook isnt looking for a fast cleaning.

I do agree that if you are going through a divorce, or bankrupcy or some other financial issue, prolly with taxes or something, if done with care, nobody would think to ask you, “have you declared all your assets, real and virtual?” at some point uncle sam is going to show up in sl kicking @ss and takin names