BREAKING NEWS: Liberty Reserve payment processor closed, owner arrested for money laundering

English: Coat of arms of Costa Rica (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Liberty Reserve, a darling among the HYIP and suspect schemes due to its international nature (send money to it, and use it to remit money anywhere in the world, no questions asked) was raided by police today at its two locations (office and home) in Costa Rica, and its owner, Bodovsky, was arrested on charges of money laundering.

As reported by TicoTimes:

Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 39, on Friday was arrested in Spain as part of a money laundering investigation performed jointly by police agencies in the United States and Costa Rica.

Costa Rican prosecutor José Pablo González said Budovsky, a Costa Rican citizen of Ukrainian origin, has been under investigation since 2011 for money laundering using a company he created in the country called Liberty Reserve.

Local investigations began after a request from a prosecutor’s office in New York. On Friday, San José prosecutors conducted raids in Budovsky's house and offices in Escazá, Santa Ana, southwest of San José, and in the province of Heredia, north of the capital. 

Budovsky's businesses in Costa Rica apparently were financed by using money from child pornography websites and drug trafficking.

Liberty Reserve had always been a rather shady outfit that earned money through transfer of money. TVI Express, a well known scam around the world, took in a lot of money through Liberty Reserve. So much so, even its clones used Liberty Reserve. It charged all sorts of fees for conversion, transfer, cash out, and so on. It also has special clauses that requires you to keep a credit card number on file that if you tried to dispute a transfer funded by credit card, it will charge you $250 "dispute fee" (from what I heard). 

There are interesting questions for companies that deal with Liberty Reserve... How clear a record does it keep and does the government have the records now? And are they holding any money that don't belong to them? Given that most Ponzi scheme judas goats join one opportunity after another, some of the net winners from Zeek no doubt have some money in LR or other payment eWallets. 

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