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Topic: Have some people used casinos to hide the origin of funds? - page 6. (Read 1045 times)

legendary
Activity: 2520
Merit: 1218

This can be done even by people who have no intention of doing so. But that's the nature of cryptocurrencies, so like it or not, it's difficult for authorities to track the funds (even if the person isn't doing anything outside of their country's tax laws).

This is the reason why you’d see some casino operators making it mandatory that all deposits are to be wagered for a specific number of time. - so that users won’t just make deposits and instantly withdraw it to a different address without having to play or risk it but if there are requirements that would make them risk the money they are to launder they would have to reconsider and use a different method.

I don’t know much about this but casinos have been actively trying to battle this type of money movement - they have been trying to restrict withdrawal in accounts that look suspicious or have activity that resembles money laundering.

Does such rule and wish to mix funds with casino funds via deposit/withdrawal really work? User deposit to a specific address all the time, he get withdrawal from a bunch of accounts only. Casinos account address are only one more address in chain. All the addresses are transparent anyway. And it is not hard to generate one address for every user, and bind it on him only. I doubt that anything is mixing properly with deposit/withdrawal through casinos.
hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 541
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This can be done even by people who have no intention of doing so. But that's the nature of cryptocurrencies, so like it or not, it's difficult for authorities to track the funds (even if the person isn't doing anything outside of their country's tax laws).

This is the reason why you’d see some casino operators making it mandatory that all deposits are to be wagered for a specific number of time. - so that users won’t just make deposits and instantly withdraw it to a different address without having to play or risk it but if there are requirements that would make them risk the money they are to launder they would have to reconsider and use a different method.

I don’t know much about this but casinos have been actively trying to battle this type of money movement - they have been trying to restrict withdrawal in accounts that look suspicious or have activity that resembles money laundering.
sr. member
Activity: 448
Merit: 560
Crypto Casino and Sportsbook
It is true that nowadays, there are several restrictions imposed by the casino due to AML/KYC laws, but in the beginning, that didn't exist (online-casinos).

There have certainly been cases where people have used casinos (and even exchanges) to hide/shuffle the origin of funds, 'cause when you deposit crypto on a platform, your link to the platform's address ends and when you go to withdraw, you withdraw funds from different origin (from other customers). Unless the platform keeps deposit/withdrawal logs of all user operations and provides them to authorities when requested.

This can be done even by people who have no intention of doing so. But that's the nature of cryptocurrencies, so like it or not, it's difficult for authorities to track the funds (even if the person isn't doing anything outside of their country's tax laws).

The fact is when people make money via illegal means, they'll definitely look for a reasonable way to cover up their tracks. Making use of cryptocurrencies is currently one way people use most of the time to cover their tracks on funded they acquired illegally. Most of the time some agencies in some countries just take a break off most of such investigations especially in cases where the funds aren't a big deal.

People who make use of casinos for such purpose usually do so with inter geographical casinos that have a wide span and accept strictly crypto. The reason they hardly make use of their regular country's casinos especially physical ones is because a majority they make use of fiat which is easier to trace compared to cryptocurrencies.
legendary
Activity: 2422
Merit: 1451
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
Even with KYC & AML laws casinos, exchanges and any centralized service for that matter can be used to circumvent tracking and hide the origin of funds. KYC makes it harder to do it without being identified but those that have money have enough power to get as many accounts as needed in other people's names. So it's not going to be a problem.

For instance, a criminal entity or a state sponsored terrorist will be able to issue as many passports to whatever name necessary. KYC solutions don't tend to check biometric data and generally don't directly verify the validity of data as they don't have access to state data.

So I would say that any centralized platform could be used for hiding and obscuring the origin of funds. Ofc this platform could report where the funds originated to the authorities if asked, but it might be too late as the Blockchain trail is lost. In the end of the day though, casinos are the least of any government's problems when exchanges and centralized wallet services have the largest volumes.
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 379
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I think lots of bad actors used those gambling platforms to launder and hide fraudulent money and that prompted the casino/gambling platforms to come up with different policies especially the KYC, that would help reveal the identity of those that carry out illegal activities with their platforms, well not everyone would be impressed with the KYC policy cause some people get affected by it when they win a jackpot or huge money and go through a long process to get their profits, but they should understand that those rules are being laid down by those platforms to protect their company from being used as a tool for money laundering or other illegal activities, so far you can prove your identity and origin of funds then you're good to go, well I understand that sometimes the process is very stressful due to poor customer services by most platforms and that's why most people are not impressed about the KYC policy. However, it's not a bad idea.
full member
Activity: 2576
Merit: 205
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There have certainly been cases where people have used casinos (and even exchanges) to hide/shuffle the origin of funds, 'cause when you deposit crypto on a platform, your link to the platform's address ends and when you go to withdraw, you withdraw funds from different origin (from other customers). Unless the platform keeps deposit/withdrawal logs of all user operations and provides them to authorities when requested.
this is not totally unheard of in fact many organized crimes use casinos mainly to hide their money laundering schemes there is a reason why casinos are often seen with malicious intent instead of just pure entertainment place

a lot of organized crimes tend to build their own casinos and this is where they let the money circulate
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 1298
I have made a quick research and found that    it is estimated that  ~ $140 billion per year  is laundered through casinos. It worth to remember that AML regulation  obliged  casinos "to establish systems and processes to monitor customer transactions and identify suspicious patterns or activities."  Again according to that research the major topology of laundering scheme via casinos include FOBTs (fixed-odds betting terminals), conversion of illegal money into casinos' chips the purpose being to cash out the latter after gaming, organization of underground gaming etc..
hero member
Activity: 2912
Merit: 541
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
It is not easy to hide the origin of funds now because people needs to verify their account in the casino. The casino can asks people to submit their document to verify their members account because casino doesn't wants to gets any problem. Even if we use crypto to playing gambling, some casino will asks you to do KYC, especially when people wants to withdraw their money.

But if people must verify their account in the beginning after they register, people can't do anything and must follows that rules. The authorities can asks the documents from the casino that explain many things about their members. From that documents, the authorities can checks and knows where the origins of funds so the authorities can do something if the money is from the illegal sources. People must be careful to submits their documents to the casino and make sure that the casino is safe and can take care the document.
legendary
Activity: 3276
Merit: 2442
 You can do this that with casinos or other businesses which demand no kyc. Some exchanges still don’t require KYC (like eXch) but their time is limited imo. You can also use a real decentralized exchange like bisq if you want to get rid of your tainted coins.

If you still decide to use a casino, make sure that you can withdraw your coins safely. If the casino mentioned KYC in its ToS (and there isn’t any casino that doesn’t nowadays) then they can ask for docs anytime even though they don’t normally do it. That’s a big risk to take. If they think the origin of your funds look questionable or the amount is too big, then they may do that. Then you can say goodbye to your funds.
hero member
Activity: 574
Merit: 554
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
It is been known and many news citing that some casinos have been used as a tool for illegal activities like money laundering and this is the main reason why the government asked them to impose KYC. But despite the aggressive action of the government and the continuous implementation of the law still, some people are doing the same.
https://complyadvantage.com/insights/understanding-money-laundering-in-casinos/

And even in trading platforms, it also happens. I see that the implementation of KYC makes sense. Although it never stops entirely, at least it freezes some accounts and minimizes illegal activities.
Casinos are currently the worst place to engage in concealing illegal funds because most of them require KYC. Before I joined the crypto industry I heard that these casinos never required any form of KYC verification and that one can easily deposit huge amounts and withdraw them at will. Maybe the government discovered that these crypto casinos have become an avenue to clean tainted funds. This is why casinos have out in place stringent KYC rules. This might be also why casinos mandate gamblers to wager all their initial deposits before withdrawals.

I once thought of using casinos to clean my money when I got campaign payment from a mixer that was seized by the government. But it became clear that I didn't need to do that since I had nothing to worry about. Some people might be using casinos to clean tainted funds but since there are other means of doing it, casinos should be the least option. Using casinos to conceal illegal activities could lead to loss of funds because these casinos can easily cooperate with the government.
hero member
Activity: 896
Merit: 654
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
It is true that nowadays, there are several restrictions imposed by the casino due to AML/KYC laws, but in the beginning, that didn't exist (online-casinos).

There have certainly been cases where people have used casinos (and even exchanges) to hide/shuffle the origin of funds, 'cause when you deposit crypto on a platform, your link to the platform's address ends and when you go to withdraw, you withdraw funds from different origin (from other customers). Unless the platform keeps deposit/withdrawal logs of all user operations and provides them to authorities when requested.

This can be done even by people who have no intention of doing so. But that's the nature of cryptocurrencies, so like it or not, it's difficult for authorities to track the funds (even if the person isn't doing anything outside of their country's tax laws).
What was happening was never good and I feel for those who would have been the victim of the money that was easily laundered by that careless arrangement. In normal circumstances, there is no way a casino or any other reasonable establishment should allow withdrawal to another account/address even if the government is not looking. But for their bad intentions or insensitivity from the beginning, they allowed it so that as their customers are doing it, they will be able to launder money for their persons of interest as well, including them.

Even now, they are only trying to please the regulators, many casinos are still doing the money laundering thing for themselves and for others, only that they have their ways to cover up for that. If exchanges could be caught in this act, how many more casinos that have weaker regulation? I hope you can extract your answer from that, however in a plain term, money laundry and bad transactional intentions will happen that time, but certainly would have reduced now.
legendary
Activity: 3108
Merit: 1290
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
It is been known and many news citing that some casinos have been used as a tool for illegal activities like money laundering and this is the main reason why the government asked them to impose KYC. But despite the aggressive action of the government and the continuous implementation of the law still, some people are doing the same.
https://complyadvantage.com/insights/understanding-money-laundering-in-casinos/

And even in trading platforms, it also happens. I see that the implementation of KYC makes sense. Although it never stops entirely, at least it freezes some accounts and minimizes illegal activities.
legendary
Activity: 1750
Merit: 1329
Top Crypto Casino
Centralized platform doesn't care if you make a withdrawal to their platform with the usual amount. Because of the different kinds of source of income into cryptocurrency people now getting large amounts of earnings and of course, if you stay into crypto you don't need to worry because only a few policies are applied. Still, once you convert your asset into a fiat currency. You are now using their platform and making a huge deposit or withdrawal which is unusual that's the time you are now getting questionable possible freezing of account and submission of documents where the money came from. This just happens to those unusual account activity but if you are an active user making transaction with your account they will treat this as a normal transaction.
hero member
Activity: 1190
Merit: 803
Centralized exchanges, casinos, lending or any other centralized sites aren't privacy tools, so it's impossible to use them to hide origin of funds.

Even though I'm not an Chainalysis's employee or someone who work to trace origin of funds, but by using free tracking site like arkhamintelligence, anyone can know the address belong to which site.

Here's the example https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/explorer/address/bc1q2p65tzw97mft7gjpa8zvkkyfxrnq9jcy482n86mg0utt76tz5zws3rk2x7

This address belong to Roobet, how it can be "anonymous"?
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 2017
It's called money laundering and it has been being done through different methods, gambling included.

Not necessarily, I did it in the past and it was not for money laundering, simply as many people use a mixer, so that bitcoins of different provenance cannot be connected by an external observer. The casino people may know that those bitcoins come from the same person but I doubt they even look at it in most cases. What happens is that as has been mentioned there are almost no casinos that are without KYC and without wagering requirements, so if you want privacy in this sense it is better to use other methods.
copper member
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1280
https://linktr.ee/crwthopia
Money laundering is everywhere and it’s not a new case whether it’s a land-based casino or an online casino. They are probably on the lookout for people who have that amount of money and maybe track whether or not it came from illegal source or something.

It is possible that they have used a land-based casino in order to wash money. There are a lot of syndicates doing this and it’s not a surprise that they are using probably cryptocurrencies as well.

It is also one of the reasons why regulations are getting harder and harder to prevent this kind of things.
full member
Activity: 784
Merit: 115
If they wants to hides their money in casino, they must search for the casino that have reputation and many people trusts the casino to makes sure they will not gets scam from the casino. But they must knows that casino can asks them to verify their identity to make sure that their members will not do something illegal that will break their rules. The casino must be careful to accept their members and asks for verification by sending their members document to the casino.

The government can track the funds from the casino to their members, especially when the governments asks the casino to gives their members data to be checked. The casino can not doing anything because they must follow the rules from the government.
sr. member
Activity: 546
Merit: 265
It's called money laundering and it has been being done through different methods, gambling included. Even with KYC feature, there are still many people who attempt laundering money through casinos platforms. This feature doesn't prevent anything at all, because it can be bypassed when the money launderer uses multiple accounts or multiple strawmen with their personal accounts to execute the scheme.

This way, big sums of money are never dealed by one single person. Rather, they dilute it into many small parts, which is taken by each strawman, so the casino's radar is less likely to force one of those people to go into KYC procedure. Some may ask what these people earn by allowing to be used by a money launderer, and the answer is usually a small comission over all the transactions they do.
And this is also one of the crucial reasons why some reputable Crypto casinos does not allow the accessibilities of a user having more than one account in their casino sites and the need for KYCs to distabilize the criminal thoughts of those who thinks they can launder money successfully through the casino platforms.

And the casinos technology program is also assembled that a specific amount deposited amount of funds in the platform should be alerted suspiciously for criminal investigation.

Many may have scot-free but the casino is not just a feasible place to do away safely with such as thought to be vulnerable for such illegal activities.
hero member
Activity: 2464
Merit: 594
KYC/AML makes it tougher to launder money anonymously.

On the privacy point, I see the argument for wanting control over your finances. However, I also think there's a balance to be struck. Crypto's anonymity can be a double-edged sword. It can be used for legitimate privacy concerns, but it can also be attractive to criminals.

Maybe there's a way to find a middle ground where people can have some level of privacy without it being completely anonymous. Perhaps stricter regulations for larger transactions or suspicious activity could be a solution.
legendary
Activity: 2660
Merit: 3710
If only the casino makes payments in cryptocurrencies and, moreover, in anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero, then it makes sense to say that the casino can be used for money laundering. But again, here it is not the casino itself that is used for laundering, but the withdrawal in anonymous cryptocurrencies. Although, if you think about it, what is the purpose of the casino in this scheme? Now there are even atomic exchanges with Monero. Perhaps they meant the legalization of income through casino winnings? If so, then it is possible. You place a bet, win, pay tax and your income is legalized. The only problem is that you need to win to do this. In my opinion, it is easier to legalize funds through a crypto exchange - if a person is really interested in legalizing funds.
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