US Government Seizes Customer Funds
Now that we have waded through the excuses issued by NETeller, it has been announced that the US Justice Department has seized funds from the third party payment processor nearly three weeks after the arrests of the company’s founders. Only US customers appear to be impacted though Gambling911.com has cautioned anyone living outside the United States to tread carefully in regard to NETeller. Nearly 80% of its customer base was located within the US.
USA Today quoted FBI agent Neil Donovan saying “funds from Neteller are being held in court as potential evidence. Some customers may get their money back.”
To further compound the problem, NETeller has stopped peer-to-peer transfers. US customers were being solicited by those in other countries as a means of getting money out. While friends and family members were helpful in this regard, unscrupulous individuals were most certainly waiting in the wings offering to assist. Gambling911.com, however, has not been made aware of any scams related to the NETeller peer-to-peer transfer option to date.
For a brief time up until last week, NETeller had been allowing US customers to withdraw money using a NETeller issued ATM card. By the time these cards arrived in the mail, few of the ATM cards worked.
“One of the ATM companies were allowing people to use the cards, another wasn’t,” a source told Gambling911.
Gambling911.com first broke the news that two NETeller co-founders were arrested in the US last month.
John Lefebvre and Steve Lawrence, both of Canada, were taken into custody. Both are out on a $5 million bond and must remain within a specified jurisdiction until their trial. The two men have pleaded “Not Guilty” to various charges including money laundering.
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com