A pal close to our hearts (and purses) comes into conflict with the authorities. More specifically, on-line auction company eBay said its PayPal auction payment unit is being investigated for possible violations of the USA Patriot Act. Shock! Horror!
Last month eBay received a letter from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Missouri about the alleged violations. The letter states that PayPal’s earlier practice of providing payment services to online gambling merchants violated provisions in the Patriot Act that “prohibit the transmission of funds that are known to have been derived from a criminal offense or are intended to be used to promote or support unlawful activity.”
Sound dangereous. I am so glad Americans are now protected by the Patriot Act against PayPal wretched practices. Apparently, the ‘crime’ happened almost 2 years ago, before eBay acquired PayPal. Part of the transaction was a committment to stop using the PayPal unit for gambling business. You can breath out now, it is not as if they were secretly raising funds for terrorists.
The authorities offered to “rescind the allegations if PayPal pays the amount of money it earned by handling online gambling transactions from October 2001, through July, 2002, plus interest.” So justice will be done and the American public can sleep safely again.
If I remember correctly, the Patriot Act, passed after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., was to give law enforcement authorities “expanded tools for investigating and deterring future terrorist acts”. We live in dangerous times, when on-line auction payment units can commit crimes under anti-terrorist legislation at will…!
The letter offered to rescind the allegations if PayPal pays the amount of money it earned by handling online gambling transactions from Oct. 26, 2001, through July 31, 2002, plus interest
This is nothing less than a shake down. If a company used these sort of tactics, they would be accused of extortion. I hope PayPal tells them that if they have a case, let them make it in court… and by the way, up yours.
Second that.
Don’t leap to PayPal’s defense too rapidly; they have gone completely over to the Brady Bunch style of working actively against 2nd Amendment rights! P-P will no longer permit ANY firearms transactions to take place with their system.
Look guys stop whining, it’s unpatriotic in these dark moments of terror…
If you see what the very same government and its agents are doing in Iraq (with, apparently much American backing) then it is perfectly reasonable to assume that it will feel that it has the “moral perogative” to arrange and dictate the way things will be done back home in the USA.
Once the government starts taking your money with the jibe that “you are no patriot if you wish to keep it” the decent to tyrany is but a heart beat away.
Perhaps after deposing the Hussein dictatorship is another regeme a lot closer to home that could be toppled in the name of freedom! And the population is already armed!
(Gosh difficult life this, being a libertarian… :0)
It is nothing but a shakedown. Really, I can’t see how people can read about such things and not see the remarkable and entirely (ahem) coincident similarities between “government agent” and “mafioso”.