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Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

What did you do with all the Google Play Credits?

When you "spend" Google Play Credits in an app, Google Play treats those credits the same as if you paid with real money: they took 30% (their take isn't so steep today), I took 10%, and then I sent the user/buyer the remaining 60% directly from my bank account (I used Dwolla back then).

It was risky because I didn't actually receive any money from Google until about a month later.

What you did was money laundering. And big chance for getting in trouble if let’s say ton of credits come from fraud/stolen and then google pays out to you and then crawl back once they realize is fraud.

I’m curious how you didn’t get into money laundering problems.

Technically it was an unregulated money transference service without KYC. The user that stole the cards from the bookstore was the one doing the money laundering part. I just enabled it (which is probably worse, legally).

I was investigated and cooperated fully.

Edit: I just remembered, the bank I used for the transference did do KYC for all users who were sent funds. This makes it more like "money dirtying", since the account is tied directly to a real identity.

Thanks for your detailed answer. Could you tell me what other things you had to deal with? Any prison, bad credit, fees, lawyer fees ?

This is not laundering, it is in fact exactly as the service was meant to be used. As long as you save where the money comes from and where it goes you are at worst operating a discount pseudo-bank. But that's what google is also doing, so we can infer that this is okay.

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