FYI, a ‘dump’ is a slang word for stolen credit & debit card information and usually contains among other things:

• Name and address of card holder
• Account number
• Expiration date
• Verification/CVV code
• PIN code

In October 2007, I wrote a short article [Marketing Dumps Online (Stolen Credit Cards)] regarding the crooks online who sell stolen credit card data. The small article was widely reprinted, widely misunderstood, and I was widely criticized for it. Relating to that story was the fact that a majority of comments under each article were just other crooks trying to list and promote the sale of their stolen cards and bank accounts.  It was very shocking.

Even months and months after being published, an online news provider recently labeled it ‘fishy’ and indicated that he thought I was promoting the sale of stolen cards, which is 100% WRONG.

Consequently, I am now writing a follow up series of article this month detailing what I have learn since that original post almost one year ago.

In October of 2007, the background information on the story centered around the fact that e-gold, a ten year old Internet Payment business, had been indicted earlier that year, in April 2007, in a massive action by, “…the U.S. Secret Service with the assistance of the IRS and the FBI….prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division. Assistance also being provided by the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section of the Criminal Division.”

(please note that an indictment is merely an accusation and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.)

This is no small complaint which the government investigators and prosecutors had created and from what I now understand about the e-gold situation– it may not be the only complaint pending.  As I said above, this is clearly a MASSIVE action by the government to try and stop or ‘kill’ the e-gold business and or imprison the operators.

E-gold has been in business for over 10 years and their software has executed countless transactions on behalf of customers for literally billions and BILLIONS of dollars, euro and yen. The amount of gold bullion the company has been responsible for over the years totals more than most countries own.

The intent of my original article was to try to point out, that even after 10 years of operating in the global world of the Internet with NO changes to their customer identification policy, even after 9/11, even after the government had indicted e-gold arrested and released the owners(April 2007)….even after the press crucified the whole business……on that day in October 2007 when I wrote the article, I could still query/Google the phrase ‘e-gold dumps’ and find criminals openly selling stolen credit card data and accepting e-gold payments.

The article shows 10 easy to find crooks online selling stolen credit card data. They are very open about their business on public forums and these ten sellers came up in the first 2-3 pages of results. I listed some of their items in the original piece. For sale were Visa, MasterCard, American Express cards along with customer information such as addresses and even the card’s PIN codes!  Offered were Business, Platinum and Gold Cards, from the US, EU, CA, AU and Asia. The options seemed endless for what kind of stolen data I could buy with e-gold.

Here was the whole point of my article:

How was it possible, after a decade of Internet changes, terrorist attacks on the US, the new Patriot Act regulations and a massive e-gold indictment….how was it possible that this kind of criminal activity was still taking place using the e-gold system?

This is a huge question. As an American you might also be asking these questions:

1. Why are the e-gold operators still allowing this to take place? Isn’t it their responsibility to dictate to all users how their digital units can be used? Why don’t they prevent it?
2. Why hasn’t someone from the government stopped this crime, surely there are laws to prevent this kind of activity?”
3. Why wouldn’t the owners of the company move to add customer identification and try to prevent stolen cards being sold with e-gold? I’ll bet this type of crime does not happen to MSBs like Western Union agents.

All good questions and statements. Who has all the answers?

If you were living in American back in 1979, you may also have asked yourself why the government does not move to arrest, prosecute or ticket all automobile drivers on the East Coast making a right turn when the light was red?

At that time an illegal right turn on red into busy traffic sometimes resulted in an accident or even a fatality. This was occasionally a very serious crime when an accident or a death occurred. Drivers would risk life and limb by breaking that law, turning into busy traffic, causing harm to others. Why didn’t the government prevent such careless actions by citizens?

Why didn’t the government arrest each and every one of those traffic offenders? There were clear laws in place to prevent such malice. How could any driver break the law so openly without regard for other’s safety, and how could any State and local jurisdictions allow it? Why didn’t someone stop all that illegal activity? Surely more laws and more severe penalties would have prevented all those illegal turns?

This is a multi part article and this week, we will be attempting to answer all these questions. We will take a look into the practices of e-gold and other forms of digital currency and try to sort through the issues from multiple points of view.

One last point before you move on to part 2,  “All 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico have allowed right turns on red since January 1, 1980.”

Part 2