U.S. GOVERNMENT SEIZES E-GOLD ACCOUNTS, OWNERS INDICTED

April 29th, 2007

It begins.

Via: Florida Today:

Two Brevard County men and two digital currency businesses they operated in Melbourne have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, accused of running an unregulated financial network that catered to criminals moving money.

Tuesday’s four-count indictment, made public Friday, charged e-gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. and owners Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, 50, of Satellite Beach; his brother Reid A. Jackson, 44, of Melbourne; and Barry K. Downey, 47, of Woodbine, Md., with four crimes involving conspiring to launder monetary instruments or operating unlicensed money-transmitting businesses from 1999 to December 2005.

E-gold, incorporated on the Caribbean island of Nevis but based in Melbourne, began offering Internet services in 1996. Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. operated e-gold and its Web site and offered a currency exchange called OmniPay. Services included checking, bill-paying and money transfers.

The indictment charged that the company’s digital currency functioned as an alternative payment system and was purportedly backed by stored physical gold, which investigators said was on deposit in Dubai and Switzerland.

Customers needed only to provide an e-mail address to open an account and that no other customer information was verified, according to court papers. The indictment accused some customers of using fictitious names such as “Mickey Mouse,” “Donald Duck” and “No Name” and could conduct international transactions without any government oversight.

In September, Douglas Jackson, a former oncologist, testified before a U.S. House subcommittee that his companies helped combat child-pornography payments by sharing information with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He complained that Secret Service officials had rebuffed his contacts since 2001.

Jackson also testified that e-gold had completed more than 67 million transactions, processed up to 70,000 daily account transfers exceeding $2 billion annually. E-gold, he said, had more than $68 million in gold on deposit at the time at London Bullion Market Association member repositories. Its Web site claims more than 4 million accounts.

The charges follow a December 2005 raid on the company’s offices and seizure of electronic records detailing millions of accounts, said James Glendinning, of the Secret Service’s Orlando office. The probe, he said, was a spinoff of a 2004 international crackdown on Internet identity thieves who also used e-gold to receive payments.

A call to the company was not returned Friday afternoon. The Jacksons and Downey could not be reached for comment.

“Douglas Jackson and his associates operated a sophisticated and widespread international money-remitting business, unsupervised and unregulated by any entity in the world, which allowed for anonymous transfers of value at a click of a mouse,” said Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. attorney for Washington.

Taylor said the three suspects are expected to surrender for a hearing in Washington in the next few weeks.

More Via: 1mdc.com:

ATTENTION

Friday Apr 27 2007 – 4AM UTC

It appears that a U.S. Government court order has forced e-gold(R) to freeze or block all of 1mdc’s accounts. All of 1mdc account’s have been frozen at e-gold for unknown reasons.

Please note that it appears a few accounts of a small number of large exchangers and users of e-gold have also been frozen overnight. (Millions of Euros of gold have been involved in this event.)

If the freeze or court order in the USA is reversed, your e-gold grams remaining in 1mdc will “unbail” normally to your e-gold account and all procedures will be normal.

We suggest not panicking: more will be known on Monday when there will be more activity in the courts.

You CAN spend your 1mdc back and fore to other 1mdc accounts. 1mdc is operating normally within 1mdc. However, you should be aware that for now the e-gold remains under the court order.

Ultimately e-gold(R) is an entirely USA-based company, owned and operated by US citizens, so, e-gold users operate by the decisions of US courts regarding the disposition of e-gold. Even though 1mdc has no connection whstsoever to the USA, and most 1mdc users are non-USA, e-gold(R) is USA based.

You are welcome to email “team at 1mdc dot com”, thank you.

More: E-Gold Founder Calls Indictment a Farce

Research Credit: Pookie and Eileen

10 Responses to “U.S. GOVERNMENT SEIZES E-GOLD ACCOUNTS, OWNERS INDICTED”

  1. ctg says:

    So, if you are non-US citizen using E-Gold account, does it mean that the US government can fuck you over and get your savings?

  2. bob m says:

    they can hold the accounts/assets indefinitely. look for a ‘form’ to be released in about 6-12 months with a background check and potential disbursement in parts beginning 2009-2010 when many will have walked away.

  3. william.jhon says:

    very sad incident but i m very sure egold will come out from this indictment because its not very first time govt did this.

    Mr Jackson now u should move to other country and leave this country where no rules and regulations are.

    BAD Bush policies are creating problems for americans day by day.

  4. watcher of events says:

    // MOD This would be the most stupid of all possible options. Since I’m not filtering out stupid comments, just the ones that are off topic, I must warn readers to NOT follow this advice, as it couldn’t be any worse than this. -Kevin

    It would seem best to hold the gold and place it in a safe deposit box rather than allow another to do so for you.

  5. laboratorian-at-work says:

    @MOD

    Why is holding gold personally a bad idea? I really doubt the gov’t will ever have the werewithal to move house-to-house siezing gold from every schmuck with a couple ounces in a safe. I am long GLD because I don’t want wealth lying around my not-exactly-robbery-proof apartment, but recognize that this is the equivalent of having gold certificates in monopoly money.

  6. Kevin says:

    @laboratorian-at-work

    I think you’ve got it backwards:

    I explicitly tell people to keep their gold under their physical control.

    https://cryptogon.com/?p=588

    Keeping gold coins in a safe deposit box isn’t an option. What if the government decides that you’re a criminal and decides to take the contents of your safe deposit box? Woops. U.S. banks are just extensions of the government now.

  7. Dennis Spain says:

    The government doesn’t like it when free men decide to keep their wealth in a form that cannot be regulated, taxed, and controlled by the government’s money ‘experts’, or in a form independent of the government regulated fiat banking system. The behemoth that has arisen linking governments and money creation through central banks is the greatest enduring threat to mankind at the present time. This despicable control of the medium of exchange makes all of us slaves to a murky system that seems to have a life of its own. Cui bono? Cui bono?

  8. Anonymous says:

    Who benefits, indeed. If you can force others to accept worthless paper as legal tender in payment of debt, then they are effectively your slaves. If you are forced to trade your labor and property for worthless bank notes, then YOU are a slave. This is precisely the situation in the U.S.A. — the citizens have been enslaved by a cabal of bankers. The dark ones who now control the American Federal Empire cannot tolerate the existence of real, constitutional gold & silver money because THIS CRIMINAL GOVERNMENT’S FIAT MONEY IS THE SOURCE OF ITS POWER. The A.F.E. will naturally attempt to destroy any currency of intrinsic value, because genuine wealth in the hands of the public represents an obstacle to world domination — a barrier to the aristocracy’s control of the planet’s resources. I appreciate what eGold is trying to do: after all, you are not free because you say so, you are free when you PRACTICE it. If you don’t even TRY to practice it, then it is surely lost… but they should know by now that the “Democrats” and “Republicans” will not rest until ALL privacy & due process rights have been completely eliminated. It is not safe to use lawful, constitutional money in the United States anymore. This has been the case for a long time. The number of illegal seizures and forfeitures are legion, but these are rarely reported by the corporate news syndicates, lest it alarm the people.

    As for “money laundering,” the highest government officials are persecuting others for what they are doing themselves. The awful truth is that thousands of billions of dollars have “gone missing” from administrative government accounts. About 3 of every 4 U.S. federal agencies cannot pass an audit. Bribes and no-bid contracts with kickbacks are standard procedure. Even 9/11 was a massive insider-trading & insurance scam. Financially speaking, the entire government has become a fraud; a hoax; a criminal enterprise of unimaginable proportions which relies on deception and intimidation. It is the most ridiculous of hypocrisies for this regime to charge anyone else with financial crimes. When that occurs, it is typically for undisclosed political reasons. Likewise, if they cannot destroy the eGold concept, they will try to make sure it never becomes a safe, reliable mode of business transaction for the masses.

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