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Comment by rick_perez | Hacker News Reader

I find this interesting because I just saw a story in my local news about Western Union getting flack because they were making it difficult for certain customers to send money to known terrorist countries. They were called 'bigoted' and 'racist'.

They really can't win here. If they allow anyone to send money anywhere, they get fined by the government for supporting criminals. If they try to make a judgment call, the public gets up-in-arms about it and thinks they are bigoted (and potentially lose customers or get involved in other lawsuits).

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Based on the article, it's much simpler than that:

"Fraudsters offering fake prizes and job opportunities swindled tens of thousands of U.S. consumers, giving Western Union agents a cut in return for processing the payments, authorities said."

In other words, it's not that they are "allowing anyone to send money anywhere"; they didn't discipline their agents for taking a cut of known fraudulent transactions.

Um, isn't this describing their regular activity, worded in a way to make ot seem more sinister? Their agents take a cut for processing payments regardless of whobis involved, no?

It's very possible, but the wording said something like, "allowing many agents to take a cut.." so I would read that like it was an additional payment or kickback of some kind.

If it was just part of business, it would have been every agent right?

> Fraudsters offering fake prizes and job opportunities swindled tens of thousands of U.S. consumers, giving Western Union agents a cut in return for processing the payments, authorities said.

I don't see it. I'm reading the actual court documents now, which I found by googling and going to the FTC's website:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2017/01/...

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/western_uni... - complaint

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/western_uni... - final judgement, which includes way more than just the monetary fine.

I don't see how that can happen. I have few friends that work in WU and every suspicious transaction is checked at few levels by different people. Maybe unless it's not "agents", but somebody higher up. Or WU have different procedures in EU and USA.

> If they allow anyone to send money anywhere, they get fined by the government for supporting criminals.

They could allow the transactions, but secretly support anything suspicious to government anti-terrorist agencies. They wouldn't get called racist because any transactions they block were at the behest of the government. They wouldn't get in trouble with the government because they're handing all their data to them. And customers wouldn't complain they're divulging private data customers people wouldn't know. It's a win-win-win.

Then it would just be the HN crowd mad that an organization is secretly passing data to the authorities...

At least it would all be just a conspiracy theory espoused by tin foil hats until another Snowden shows up.

If people couldn't be bothered with the actual Snowden leaks, surveillance of money transfers to Pakistan isn't going to move the needle either.

What, exactly, do you think your bank does when they stumble over transactions that they deem suspicious?

Exactly: They report it to the authotities.

Why does it have to be "any suspicious activity", and why "anti-terrorist agencies"? Why not start with "things that are obviously crimes" and "the police"?

The one time I tried sending money from Los Angeles, CA, USA to Portland, OR, USA, I wasn't able to meet the criteria necessary to complete the transaction. Some my friend and I, both US Citizens, raised a red flag. It felt pretty lame, and the person manning the Western Union location couldn't care less about helping me navigate the system. I haven't lost a lot of sleep over this, but I never tried using the service again!

Did they tell you what the criteria was? Or did they just deny you based on your name or something?

It had something to do with my friend not being able to provide enough information to prove "I'm not a terrorist" to what felt like a pedantic level of satisfaction. I don't remember the specifics.

It should be difficult but doable? I could understand a few questions...

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