Western Union crackdown takes online gambling payments systems down

If there is anything successfully safe inside of the US online gambling and betting industry, that must be without no doubt the operators’ payment systems. The online gambling and betting operators in the US states that has regulated the online gaming industry has had to face consequences because of the payment systems as not all e-commerce firms can be as professional and secure as the main companies that have been providing these online services for decades. And that is why the online gambling payments systems are still out of the operators’ reach and practically not much can be done about it. We have read recently that several gamblers had problems with some financial transactions during the first few weeks of football season. The players reported several times that they were having difficulties to make an online money transfers from Western Union to online sports books. The funds that have been sent out have been blocked and Western Union has been holding onto those transfers.

In one of the cases, a player who has been playing offshore for longer than 10 years had his funds blocked. He made a deposit through Western Union and the consequences were shocking for this player. Western Union reported this transaction and now this player is being investigated for fraud; the deposit was also held and blocked although the player was able to get his funds back immediately. From another of these odd cases, we have heard that another player is in the same situation but his funds have not been returned and he is also being investigated for fraud. Another player had to fill out three different forms in order for Western Union to evaluate whether to return the funds to the player or not.

Western Union is conducting an investigation for “fraudulent transactions” as well as holding money transfers from those Western Union customers who have received money from offshore gambling activities. Western Union strategy is based on identifying all these money transfers from illegal gambling activities as wells as creating a blacklist with the names of everyone involved in these transactions. Western Union has been refunding its customers, immediately after receiving several gamblers’ complaints as holding funds is an illegal practice for any financial firm. Western Union has been monitoring any transactions of $200 or more that has been sent to developing countries. All these issues have been affecting sport books atrociously; the first weeks of football season are the busiest time for e-commerce companies as their systems daily receive largest numbers of bets. All of these sports books that have been closely working with Western Union have lost up to 50% due to malpractice from Western Union.