2 Brevard men face laundering charges

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.

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/...S/70428010/1086

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More on e-gold

e-gold Hits The Wall! Government Seizes Major Agents' Accounts

E-gold Major Agents' Accounts Seized By US Government

It now appears this morning that all large e-gold exchange agents
doing business with US clients have had their e-gold accounts seized
by US court order.

Here is what we know as of this morning.

Icegold, AnyGoldNow, 1mdc, Omnipay and other large exchange agents
have all had their accounts blocked by a US government agency court
order. When attempting to log in on these accounts, the e-gold
server responds that the account does not exist. It appears the
accounts have been seized by the US authorities. It is now not
possible to unbail bars from e-gold Ltd. (Icegold has since opened
a new e-gold account and seems to be back doing business.)
*************

*** From the 1mdc web site. http://www.1mdc.com/

ATTENTION

Friday Apr 27 2007 - 4AM UTC

It appears that a U.S. Government court order has forced e-gold®
to close down or confiscate all of 1mdc's accounts. All 1mdc
account's have been closed at e-gold by order of the US Government.

Please note that it appears the accounts of many of the largest
exchangers and largest users of e-gold have also been closed or
confiscated overnight: millions of Euros of gold have been lost or
confiscated in this event. Many of the largest exchangers are
shutdown.

Realistically, it is extremely unlikely that this action will ever
be reversed.

If the action is reversed, your e-gold grams remaining in 1mdc will
"unbail" normally to your e-gold account.

You CAN spend your 1mdc back and fore to other 1mdc accounts.
However you must be aware that it is likely your e-gold will never
be released from e-gold.

Ultimately e-gold® is an entirely USA-based company, owned and
operated by US citizens, so, as e-gold users we must respect the
decisions of US courts and the US authorities regarding the
disposition of e-gold and the safety and security of US citizens.

Even though 1mdc has no connection whstsoever to the USA, and most
1mdc users are non-USA, ultimately e-gold is USA based.

1mdc thanks it's users and technical staff and support staff. From
1mdc's point of view, 1mdc had only just started to generate income
from spend fees so five years expense and experimentation was
wasted.

It is the opinion of your 1mdc team that:

1. The early era of DGC privacy is over.

2. USA citizens will simply never be able to use DGCs.

3. The only DGCs that operate from now on will:
(angel) Have no connection to the US
(b) Have no USA users (exactly as Swiss banks have no USA users)
(b) Will have higher ID requirements than e-gold currently does.

You are welcome to email "team@1mdc.com" but, again, the realistic
view is that the e-gold® will never be released. Note that of all
e-gold confiscated by US court order, none has ever been released.

We already have a topic for this in the E-Gold section.
Please use existing thread for discussion.
Use the "Reply topic" instead of the "Start topic" button.

Closing topic now.
Please be sure to review our forum rules before posting again: http://www.moneymakergroup.com/boardrules.html

Thanks,
G*M