HOW MANY TIMES WE GOTTA TELL YA??
After following the lead of one of those fraudsters “Who didn’t Go Away” Ryan Hult, Vixious Merchant Services LLC and Keybancard LLC and their owner, David Vankkomen allegedly adopted Hult’s twice sanctioned schemes, Tax Club and PayBasics, thinking that three tries would be lucky. It wasn’t. In January 2013 the FTC had closed down a group of entities and their principals doing business as, among other entities, The Tax Club, for engaging in deceptive telemarketing practices in connection with the sale of purported small business development products and services. That same month, Hult formed TSM. Hult is a former Tax Club employee, as were several of the telemarketers who worked for the RBC Entities.
It’s becoming very apparent that processing for fraud merchants may well put the processor in the same government stew as their clients.
When caught laundering transaction the stew gets even hotter. Cases that may be initially FTC or CFPB sanctions may be referred for criminal prosecution.
See http://acquirerrisk.com/payment-processing-operation-sued-for-credit-card-laundering/ and http://acquirerrisk.com/merchant-account-processors-banned/
In the matter at hand,http://acquirerrisk.com/ftc-vs-top-shelf-marketing/, one can read the details, which include the following:
133. The Vixous Payments Defendants provided substantial assistance or support to sellers and telemarketers that the Vixous Payments Defendants knew, or consciously avoided knowing, were engaged in acts or practices that violate Section 310.3(c) of the TSR, as described in Paragraphs 79-104 above.
134. The Vixous Payments Defendants’ acts or practices alleged inParagraph 133 constitute deceptive telemarketing acts or practices in violation of the TSR, 16 C.F.R. § 310.3(b).
- Most of the RBC Defendants’s laundered sales were processed through merchant accounts opened with Secure Bancard, LLC (“Secure Bancard”),
a registered ISO of the merchant acquiring bank, Synovus