I haven't seen this talked about, but just wanted to share that you can use a credit card to deposit funds into an online casino, as a purchase, and then withdraw funds later in the form of a check sent to your home. YMMV.

This works very nicely if you wanted to churn AA cards for the $750 thing or earn miles on other cards. Just another option to other cash equivalents such as US Mint coins or Amex TCs.

I am purposely leaving the actual establishment name out for the time being as I do not believe that this holds true with all sites. I am interested in what types of responses that I will be receiving.

I do believe that it's illegal for a US citizen to do this. As such, it's likely that any casino that accepts your US issued credit card is not going to draw attention by calling it anything other than a purchase transaction. The deposit of a casino issued check to a US bank account may be equally problematic - the IRS may will decide it's gambling income . I think you're playing with fire.

Fire - possibly, but not likely for the time being. I believe that they use a clever tactic, although they do not advertise it.

The purchase shows up as some sort of phone card. The check is sent from a 3rd party unrelated source via a courrier, with tracking info and everything. Had no problems dealing with them for nearly 2 years now.

Recently, after coming across this forum, I just realized another use for them (until now, I was just amazed that I was never charged a cash advance fee for the transactions and was loving it).

I have also benefitted from all you FT'ers and wanted to give a little back in any way possible. Some may be able to take advantage of this knowledge. But like you mentioned, will probably not be for everyone.

If only it weren't illegal and very likely a violation of various money laundering laws--as well as being very likely to draw the attention of Homeland Security.

Plus, I am not sending any of my cash or credit to someone who uses what they claim are "clever" tactics to try and evade the law. They may not be the most honest guys in the world. @:-)

I've actually seen this "idea" being discussed a couple of times on FT. Here are two examples:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...bank-acct.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...e-casinos.html

If this idea is so legit and easy to implement, I bet all the savvy FTers would have been all over it by now.

How does it work at regular casino's?
If i want 500 euro in Chips, will it be marked as a purchase or withdrawal?

Casinos charge it as a cash advance (i.e. ATM or cash advance machines).

No casino is interested in giving the credit card company 1.5% - 3.5% for the money... especially when that's usually the juice they earn on their table games.

An easy way to do it, without the worry about illegalities, is to get credit at a casino on a cruise ship. It is marked as a purchase and you can cash out any time.

Of course, you have to take a cruise.

Also note that this can be a red flag to your card issuer - you may find your credit reduced or cards canceled if the amounts involved are significant. Card issuers have learned that Vegas can be the last stop before bankruptcy court.

I have done this for the past 3 years and typically have around 10k out with 2-3 casinos at one time. I will start by saying its not as easy as it seems. The casinos typically charge a fee to withdraw money. The casinos I use charge $30 and it gets sent to my bank account as an international wire. This means I have to play a little to make up the fees. Yes, I have both lost and won but am probably even through the past 3 years after fees. The second thing is getting around the SAR with your bank. I used to have 2 bank accounts that I would use to make the deposits into. I screwed up once and made about 20k in withdrawals over the period of a month into one account rather than split it up. That account was flaged by the bank and they questioned my international wires. I closed the account 3 months later. I still do this but now do not do more than 10k per month as I only have one bank account.

About a year ago when congress passed new legislation and it took the casino's I was using almost 2 months to pay out. Good think I had cash on hand to pay the cc bills.

I have talked to lawyer friends that said you could run into problems with IRS, Homeland Sec, etc... but they said if you have records that show you were not evading taxes and are honest from the begining you will probably get away with it as you really arnt a threat to society. YMMV...

Not necessarily true, but it might get you a temporary hold on your card and a call asking for verification of the activity the first time you do it...

Just what I need, an opportunity to explain myself to the IRS and Homeland security ...

The feds will make it simple by sending out a pair of FBI agents to snicker at your lame excuse.

MisterNice

I love miles, but not that much.

SARs are a damn'd interesting subject. I finally realized why Amex gave me such grief over my $50k a month tab I was running when I went to a FinCEN conference when I worked within financial services. Now I'm an expert on SARs.