E-Gold charged with money laundering
Doug Jackson, Reid A. Jackson, and Barry K. Downey have been indicted by the US government for illegally operating e-gold, http://www.e-gold.com private digital gold currency. They operated in Melbourne after being indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC They are charged with running an unregulated financial network that catered to criminals who laundered illegal money.
Jeffrey Taylor, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and other Justice Departments. Authorities said they expect all three to surrender in Washington DC at a later date.
A four-count indictment was brought against E-Gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. and the owners, Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, of Satellite Beach; Reid A. Jackson, of Melbourne; and Barry K. Downey of Woodbine, Maryland. Each was charged with conspiring to launder monetary instruments; conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business; operate an unlicensed money transmission business; and unlicensed money transmission in Washington, DC
The federal, state and local task force operated for two and a half years led by the US Secret Service in Orlando, along with the IRS, FBI and other state and local law enforcement agencies. Federal prosecutors obtained a brief search warrant and allegedly seized millions of dollars. That resulted in at least 58 account holders being exposed and many believed to be criminals laundering illegal money through E-Gold operations and transactions.
“Douglas Jackson and his associates operated a sophisticated and pervasive international money remittance business, unsupervised or regulated by any entity in the world, allowing anonymous transfers of value at the click of a mouse,” said Taylor. “It is not surprising that criminals of all stripes were drawn to E-Gold as a place to move their money with impunity. As the indictment alleges, the defendants in this case knowingly allowed them to do so and benefited from their crimes “.
The indictment accused the digital currency “EGold” of functioning as an alternative payment system and was allegedly backed by stored physical gold. It stated that customers only needed to provide an email address to open an account and that no other customer information was verified. The indictment accused some clients of using fictitious names such as “Mickey Mouse”, “Donald Duck” and “No Name” and could carry out international transactions without any government regulation.
Because of that, it became a “highly favored payment method” by investment scammers, identity and credit card thieves, and online peddlers of child pornography, authorities said.
A call to the offices of E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve, the founder denies the charges. Dr. Douglas Jackson, president and founder of E-Gold, speaking on behalf of his fellow directors and both companies, strongly denies the charges, making a particular exception to allegations that either company has ever turned a blind eye. against payments for child pornography or for the sale of stolen identity and credit card information.
Dr. Jackson stated: “With regard to child pornography, the government knows full well that its allegations are false, but they highlight these irresponsible and deliberately damaging statements to demonize E-Gold in the public eye. During the Inquisition, Las Accusations of witchcraft and heresy were used to sanctify torture and seizure of property. In post-9/11 America, child pornography and terrorism serve as preferred allegations. However, E-Gold, as an incontrovertible matter of fact , is the most effective E-Gold Ltd. is a founding member of the Financial Coalition to Eliminate Child Pornography of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
E-Gold is the only member institution that demonstrates with hard and auditable data a drastic reduction of such payments to practically zero, while billions of dollars of child pornography continue to flow through other (highly regulated) payment systems. [Most members, that is, all the banks and credit card associations are utterly unable to even provide an estimate of the volume of such payments processed by their systems. eBay’s PayPal subsidiary, who may have the ability to make such a determination, has refused to do so and has indicated they destroy payment records after two years.] What’s worse, until August 2005, when NCMEC bravely broke ranks with US law enforcement agencies and began directly notifying E-Gold about criminal sites through CyberTipline, the component agencies of the The US Department of Justice deliberately concealed their knowledge of E-Gold’s child pornography abuses by the Gold investigators, subordinating the fight against actual crime to a political agenda designed to tarnish E-Gold. “
Click HERE to read Dr. Jackson’s full denial statement.