The Gold Blog

In a post 9/11 world, “due diligence” is constantly on the forefront—or at least we are expected to believe that. Although banks these days are preaching “due diligence,” it appears that at least one bank does not practice what it preaches. Monterey County Bank, based in Monterey California, http://www.montereycountybank.com that supports several card platforms for businesses providing prepaid debit card products for use on the internet and at atms, has missed the boat on “due diligence,” at the expense of those who entrusted it.

One of those businesses that it sponsors, Digital World Global Card, Inc., http://www.digitalworldcard.com , based out of New York, New York, is owned in full by sole shareholder Joseph Simon LaCroix, aka Joseph Simon, a convicted felon in the province of Ontario, Canada, according to Rowena McDougall, Senior Manager, Public Affairs, for the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) .

On October 3, 2005 Joseph LaCroix, the sole officer and director of Digital World Financial, pleaded guilty to the charge of conducting the business of a loan and trust corporation without being registered in the province of Ontario. LaCroix was fined $50,000 and placed on probation for two years. As a condition of the probation LaCroix must pay approximately $2.2 million in restitution to depositors. Good luck on collecting that!

LaCroix also pleaded guilty to carrying on the business of insurance in Ontario without a licence and was fined $5,000. Seems Canada garners favor with criminals, as its criminal penalties certainly don’t seem to discourage crime.

For more on LaCroix’s convictions, see the following:

http://www.claimsurvey.com/english/pubs/news/2005/20051007-digitalworld.asp

http://www.fsco.gov.on.ca/english/pubs/news/2005/20051007-digitalworld.asp

http://www.ontarioinsurance.com/english/licensing/ceasedesistorders/cdo-digitalworld.asp

http://www.ontarioinsurance.com/english/pubs/bulletins/mebulletins/2006/g-03_06.asp

http://www.sfsc.gov.sk.ca/ssc/files/enforcementorders/2002_enf/temporary/digitalworldfinancialinc(temp)feb27-02.pdf

http://www.sfsc.gov.sk.ca/ssc/files/enforcementorders/2002_enf/extending/digitalworldfinancialinc(ext)mar13-02.pdf

http://www.fsco.gov.on.ca/English/licensing/ceasedesistorders/cdo-digitalworld.asp

Now, less than three years later, LaCroix’s Digital World Global Card, Inc. was shut down on April 1, 2008, by Monterey County Bank after LaCroix has allegedly misappropriated the funds of its many cardholders. Those cardholders had put their trust in Digital World Card, Inc. as well as Monterey County Bank—after all, if you can’t trust a bank, who can you trust? To add insult to injury, LaCroix had his staff to tell cardholders that their accounts were being audited by the bank, implying that they had somehow done something wrong. His staff has since become non-existant. Calls to the company (866) 878-8020 go directly to voice mail, and are not returned. Calls to LaCroix’s cell phone (347) 853-4746 went unanswered.

It should be noted that apparently all of LaCroix’s resellers were left out in the cold. It should also be noted that the ONLY cards affected are those that have the name Digital World Global Card at the top of the card – No others. Funds were sent to Digital World Card, Inc. for the benefit of cardholders, and instead, went to the benefit of LaCroix. In reported cases, LaCroix even emptied funds already on cardholders cards!

LaCroix’s site, Digital World Card, Inc., still maintains its website at http://www.digitalworldcard.com . Do Not Order From This Site! Do not become one of his victims! If the bank backing your prepaid debit card is Monterey County Bank, do your OWN due diligence!

Please remember that Monterey County Bank merely shut his program down on April 1, 2008. They offered absolutely NO COMPENSATION for their cardholders whatsoever. Do you think they would feel the same if you owed them money?

Remember, Buyer Beware!

IGECARD.COM, INC. recently learned that its previous debit card supplier would not be replacing its current cardholders IGE Debit Cards with a new card, as originally promised.

IGECARD staff found this completely unsatistactory.  As a result, their staff went to work for a better solution.  And they found it!  Effective immediately, all previous IGE Cardholders qualify for a FREE Replacement of their IGE Card!  With the assistance of Instant Gold Exchange, all previous IGE Cardholders in good standing when the program closed will receive a FREE Digital World Global Debit Card.  The only expense to the Cardholder will be the shipping and handling costs of the card, which is $4.95.  This can be paid via e-gold to account 2125440 (DWG Debit Card).  

Instant Gold Exchange will need the following from the IGE Cardholder: 

Name:
Address:
City/State/Zip:
Date of Birth:
IGE Card #:—XXXXXX (last six digits)  Send the above information to:  sales@instantgold.net and make the $4.95 payment for S/H and that’s it!  

Digital Gold Card
https://www.thedigitalgoldcard.com

E-gold, E-bullion ATM Debit Card.Welcome to Digital Gold Card!! 
The next generation international e-gold and e-bullion ATM stored value
debit card. Are you looking for a simple solution turning your e-gold and e-bullion
into spendable cash?  Our international stored value atm debit card can be funded with both the
e-gold and e-bullion payment interfaces. How good is the Digital Gold Card?
You spend your e-gold, e-bullion to us and withdraw your funds using using
over 800,000 ATM terminals worldwide. 

On a darker note, we now learn that the FBI has actually frozen the funds of all US clients, which were still ‘on account’ at NETeller the online e-wallet. It was earlier believed that the digital money would be refunded to US players and now they are calling it evidence and the cash is on ice.

Strangely enough, the authorities are attempting to link NETeller’s online payment processing of gambling money to terrorist funding. Despite the fact that NETeller in the UK has public shareholders, pays dividends and offers 100% audited financial statements, the FBI is pursuing an argument that e-wallet funds are being used to finance terrorist.

Additionally, despite the transparent nature of all these UK payment companies, subpoenas have been issued to the following Wall Street investment banks HSBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort. All of these fine companies participated in underwriting public offerings for some of the more popular online gambling webs. They all have offices in London and now they all have records being subpoenaed.

This is simply bizarre. Its a great political move because now you have all the other digital currency operators thinking…Am I next?

One notable online gaming expert is quoted as saying:

“(Terrorism is) a smokescreen thrown up by the right-wing Christian lunatics in the government who want to control every facet of human behavior from birth to death. As far as I know, there isn’t a scintilla of evidence there’s any link between online sites and terrorist groups.” *lvbusinesspress.com

Wow, talk about chasing a wild goose! I have not seen anything like this since Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy crusaded during 1950’s to stop the ‘Red Threat’. Should we start calling this the ‘Poker Threat’ of 2007?

Look closely, the US has gone from Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s (VA) bill, H.R. 4411, which originally got support from the Christian Coalition in an attempt to ban all Internet gambling, up to the present day which is, David Litterick — the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York attempting to connect the dots between online poker money and Osama Bin Laden style funding support. I just don’t see it. The original anti gambling bill was about stopping kids’ access to online gaming. How did they arrive at this new prosecutorial frontier?

Mr. Litterick is one of the finest legal minds in the US and in the past has prosecuted terrorists involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and now holds a top position at the Department of Homeland Security.

The significance of Mr. Litterick’s appearance here is quite a shift in politics since August of last year when Rep. Goodlatte had to burn the midnight oil to gain support for his anti gambling bill. With this kind of persecution ahead of them, I don’t think the NETeller execs have a snowballs chance in hell of surviving the case.

This should be a big warning for the gold backed digital currency e-dinar. Formerly operated by the e-gold think tank this electronic money is based on the Islamic Dinar. Operated from Malaysia and Dubai Internet City (a great headquarter for any online business), the primary function of the e-dinar system is to render payments, in gold (e-dinar) and silver (e-dirham), from one customer account to another.

If they are trying to paint ‘poker’ money as terrorist financing, I can’t imagine what they will say about e-dinar. Of course e-dinar is not yet processing 7 billion + each year. Although its a fine digital gold currency, I don’t think it is quite that popular!

This is IMHO a very dark time for the US. Now at the dawn of a new age of ‘electronic money’, short sighted US regulators are taking one step forward and three steps back.

Digitalmoneyworld.com

Technorati Tags: NETeller, FBI, terrorist, online gambling, online gaming, anti gambling bill, NETeller

Del.icio.us Tags: FBI, NETeller, e-wallet, digital money, online payment, gambling, terrorist funding, Wall Street, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort, digital currency, Poker Threat, Christian Coalition, online poker, Osama Bin Laden, e-dinar

Q1. How long has your company been online?
XtraOrbit has been online since July 2002, so it’s almost our Fifth year online.

Q2. Please tell us more about your online business?
We are an IT solutions provider based in Alexandria, Egypt Providing web hosting, domain registration, and web development services to small and medium businesses. Also I would like to mention, that our hosting infrastructure depends on a State of the art carrier class data center facility located in Houston, Texas, as well as another one located in Cairo, Egypt.

Q3. What digital currency do you accept?
Mainly, e-gold and Moneybookers along with the traditional Visa/Master cards, but soon we’ll start accepting other digital currencies as Liberty Reserve, e-Bullion and 1MDC.

Q4. How long have you accepted e-gold?
We started accepting e-gold since 2003 when we were first introduced to e-gold by a friend and I would like to say that it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.

Q5. Why do you accept e-gold?
At first, we were looking for an alternative solution for accepting payments, especially for 3rd world countries where credit card market penetration is very low compared to the United States and other European countries. But now and after several years of accepting e-gold, we’re sure that e-gold has the potential to be a dominant player in the e-market, and we would like to be there when the time comes.

Q6. What hosting customers do you feel you are targeting by accepting e-gold?
There’s a myth out there, that e-gold is only used by certain customers or communities, but from my own experience, this is not true, as we have customers who prefer to pay with e-gold from almost every spot in the world. We’ve even plotted our customers’ locations on a daily updated map, check it yourself at: XtraOrbit.com

Q7. Do you accept casino hosting, investments or adult webs using e-gold?
No, we don’t accept HYIPs, Gambling or Adult (legal/illegal) sites to be hosted or operated on our network. I’m proud to say that we were the first hosting company to enforce such policy, we even went as far as putting signs on every page of our website asking customers not to sign if their websites are related to these sites.

Q8. Who is your mainstream e-gold customer ?
Since our hosting packages suits almost everyone, I believe that anyone paying with e-gold is a potential customer, from the average Joe to Mr. Business Man.

Q9. What benefits do you see that e-gold & digital gold currency bring to your business?
Simply Peace of mind, with their lowest transaction rates in the market, the “no chargeback” guarantee and their top notch security measures. Not to mention that every penny in the e-gold system is backed by real gold, which even adds more protection against fiat inflation.

Q10. Would you recommend e-gold to other hosting and IT solutions companies? Why?
Sure, I highly recommend e-gold to any service provider, not just hosting or IT solution providers, especially those providing real-time services as domain registration or download able software, as I’m sure they’ll be pleased with the “no chargeback guarantee” along with the benefits mentioned before. Also, with a few lines of code they’ll be able to integrate e-gold into any payment system in a matter of minutes, thanks to the e-gold shopping cart interface (SCI).

Q11. What changes have you noticed over the past 3 years in the use of digital gold currency/e-gold?
I believe that e-gold –at some stage- was mainly used to store funds but it’s not the case anymore. Many online shops have started to accept e-gold through the past years, thus encouraging users to spend their ‘stored’ e-gold in exchange for goods and services. While the HYIP/Gambling market still holds the lion share in daily transactions. I hope that soon enough, and with the expanding user base this will be changed.

Q12. Do you see a profit difference between credit card income and digital currency income? (we understand that digital currency may have lower fees)
Of course, e-gold for example offers the lowest rates in the market, also their “no chargeback” guarantee keeps you assured that you’ll never get charged for fraudulent transactions as it’s the case with credit cards.

Q13. Since there are no ‘chargebacks’ with e-gold may I ask if you have experienced any with your credit card income ?
Credit card chargebacks have always been a major threat for our online business, costing us thousands of dollars every year, no matter how hard we tried or how good our fraud screening or due diligence checks were.

Q14. Have your digital currency account ever been hacked, frozen or limited?
Thanks to e-gold Secure Randomized Keyboard ‘SRK’, AccSent and other security measures our account has never been hacked, frozen or limited.

Q15. Have you incorporated or built in e-gold into any of your clients’ shopping carts or webs?
I’m glad to say that we’ve integrated e-gold in many online stores on behalf of our clients.

Q16. Do many of your clients accept digital currency such as e-gold?
Around 40% of our clients accept e-gold as their preferred method of payment.

Q17. Do you recommend e-gold to your clients?
In every possible occasion, and as far as offering special discounts to those paying with e-gold.

Q18. The growth of the Internet has been tremendous in the past several years and your business has thrived, what do you see as the future of e-gold and digital gold currency?
I would say that e-gold -as well as other digital gold currencies- have the chance to become a role player in the near future. But to be honest, they have to put more efforts in advertising and promoting their concept.

Q19. What webs would you recommend to new users where they can learn more about digital gold currency?
The digital gold currency community is a rich one, users from all over \the world contribute on daily basis to share their knowledge.

I highly recommend the following sites to new users :

http://www.gold-pages.net
http://www.goldfaqs.com
http://www.dgcwiki.com
http://www.the-gold-blog.com/

*I would like to thank Mr. Halawany for providing me with the interview.

http://www.digitalmoneyworld.com

e-gold