ElPresidente

Nobody here works for American Express, at least that posts publicly. Many suspect that someone at the company may read these forums for intel. I wouldn't count on anything, other than that if you do a lot of cash loads and few CC swipes, at some point you will get shutdown.

Don't get more GC inventory than you can stand to sit on if they cut you off. I had substantial amount of AGC when Target cut off Redbird CC loads. The money floating in that though, was not my entire budget though so all my bills still got paid and I did not come crying a river to FT. I just spent off some of the AGC and liquidated others for a small fee.

IMHO forget it entirely and move on. I had some good times with RB, BB, Serve, etc. I wouldn't bother spinning up infrastructure and knowledge for it now.

Ruhr

I'm looking at it in this manner. Like a significant other who suddenly dumps you. It's hard to forget. You'll remember the good times. But it's painful, and you'll move on and you will get through this, and you'll find someone else (someTHING else, the next MS opportunity around the corner).

azepine00

thats some messed up priorities there..
i can see perhaps analogies with your favorite store being closed or brand discontinued but certanly not separation with so...

AlohaDaveKennedy

Meh - as a retired fraud examiner I have said for years that any money launderer worth his salt would be MLing in real estate, not MLing with MS. So now here comes FINCEN temporarily requiring the actual names (not the shell companies) of the purchasers involved in 1 million dollar plus all cash real estate transactions in New York and Miami for the next several months. Damn - there goes our property values in Cocaine Cowboy Country.

AndrewTheMan

This is so interesting to me - won't they just use "shell" buyers? IE paying people to act as officers of the shell LLCs/Trusts?

nwflyboy

ADK! Where ya been? It took the sudden appearance of the Bluebird Cardinals (finally) to flush you out!

I heard the story on this today on the radio. Obviously, we are just a bunch of pikers!

Sounds like we all need to just stop crying over dead birds and start churning apartments in NYC and Miami.

abcpp

Love that idea! "Can you please put that fine $1M m'partment on my AAdvantage card?

On a more serious note: how is that Amex can retroactively apply new T&C to existing accounts? When we were performing "manufactured spending", there were nothing prohibiting it so we didn't violate anything. How it's possible to change game play rules and apply them backwards???

MaderTravels

Haha, anyone else just receive this email? This was on one of my accounts that got shutdown!


XXXX, your Bluebird® Account is fully reloadable, so you can enjoy using it again and again. Simply add funds with any of these convenient options and you are ready to go:
Add funds at Walmart
Add cash for FREE at virtually any Walmart checkout register. With more than 4,000 Walmart locations nationwide, there′s likely to be one near you.


Add funds conveniently
Enroll in FREE Direct Deposit to have all or part of your paycheck added to your Account and get access to your money up to 2 days faster.1 It's also an easy and FREE way to receive federal and state government benefits like Social Security, unemployment (varies by state) and more.


Add funds anytime, anywhere
Log in to your Account to add funds by linking your U.S. debit card. Access the FREE Mobile app2 for Android or iOS to add money to your Account at your convenience.

529guy

It's a bit more complicated than that. Here's the press release.

https://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/html/20160113.html

Read more on "enhanced due diligence for beneficial owners" if interested. The rule is coming. Been a global standard that the US financial institution lobby has been pushing back on for years. Won't impact you guys in your day to day behaviors but essentially today a FI can be blind, by process design, to who controls a corporate entity and who is the underlying owner and be in compliance with the rules. Very soon I'll likely face a potentially very large fine and very public sanctioning if I don't perform "know your customer" on the corp, the authorized actors and the underlying owners and they turn out to be El Chapo or Assad et al.

This is FinCen testing it out in a fun arena and I'm sure they'll find a lot of dirty money in real estate.

I keep seeing people say MO's bring no additional scrutiny. YMMV but the rules say I need to scrutinize cash equivalents in a way that I don't need to for ACH or check or wire. Will your bank tolerate it? If I ran your bank's AML department, no. Not worth the cost in paying attention to you. MO's are bought with cash/cash equivalents and the only people doing real volume are the MS gang and criminals laundering cash.

Werewolfdad

http://i.imgur.com/7uRshAS.png

I got it. .......s

AndrewTheMan

I feel like this is going to be insanely difficult to do.. Title insurance companies really aren't parties to the transaction on the funding level.

I feel like if someone was going to go through great lengths to hide who really is the "beneficial owner" of an LLC they would "layer" trusts and other entities as the managers/members of purchasing LLCs and hire random people to act as authorized signors/managers on the individual transactional level.

On the MS level, there is a very real reason banks don't like MOs and I think you hit the nail on the head. Banks simply don't want to play with fire on the off chance they get burned.

satman40

It's really not hard to figure out who's doing the MS .

It's really no problem shutting off someone that you're not making a profit on

The only reason to be in businesses to make a profit

nwflyboy

Well, except for the bloggers. They just want to help people.

i2000s

I was surprised to see that BB is being shut down, while I was about to MS to satisfy the min spend requirement of my Citi AA card. However, one data point I can contribute to this thread is that my BB has not been shut down so far. Maybe the following factors make my BB survive:

1. I only use BB to load VGC and then pay rent to my landlord. Note that I have never used BB to pay a CC or withdrawn to my bank accounts ever.
2. I haven't been using BB for a few recent months.

Can I still go through the routine 1 if I need to satisfy the min requirement for the bonus from my new Citi AA card? Thoughts?

silver6054

Right, breaking up with an SO is much less upsetting than BB/Serve ending. There are many more potential SOs than reliable MS vehicles.