Starting to hit the mainstream media now-- and they’re speculating Daybreak was an attractive acquisition primarily as a means to launder money.
Like I said back when Avenetti first posted that document, this could mean some serious shit for Daybreak.
Reference on money laundering in MMOs:
Hmm fascinating. Fwiw having worked there and at other online gaming companies, while criminals do try and sometimes succeed at money laundering within online games it is unthinkable to me anyone within Daybreak or any games company I have seen would ever willingly participate or assist any such activity.
If someone asked any programmer or exec or anyone at that company to do something illegal or assist breaking the law or turning a blind eye I am confident they would quit on the spot and call the FBI.
So although I do think Daybreak is in a bad spot (mainly due to poor financials) I would be very surprised, shocked actually, if there was any knowing assistance to money laundering going on there.
It wouldn’t be knowing assistance so much as development priorities shifting away from enforcing RMT rules towards server stability, or performance, or whatever.
DBG’s banks would have frozen them out of the financial system within a few days or even hours if Vekselberg had 50%+ ownership or control. If the company is making public announcements it isnt related to CN/Renova and it is controlled and/or there are still funds flowing his way then OFAC and the US Treasury will spoil their day.
Oh at a personal level for Epstein and the execs, good luck with banking in the future if you are convicted or paid fines for sanctions evasion. It’s Serious Shit™
The beauty of laundering money through a videogame is that it’s hella-hard to track. That’s actually the point.
Even if Epstein really does own Daybreak, Epstein was a managing director at Columbus Nova for something like 17 years. He essentially is Columbus Nova, and Columbus Nova really is Renova Holdings US branch. That was its original name. Epstein could be facilitating money laundering and sanctions evasion there.
Remember, this isn’t about Daybreak’s revenue. That’s besides the point, they could be losing money hand over fist and they would not care, much like the donut shop in my hometown that was used to launder drug money. They couldn’t give a shit if Dunkin’ Donuts sold better product cheaper, they weren’t about the donuts.
Yeah, but even in that case someone on the exec team would have to be knowingly agreeing to that and understand why. I know half that exec team, I just cant imagine any of them ever being a part of that.
To your point though, I suppose a board member (or owner) could just quietly note when engineering cycles were being put to other areas and give the “go” light to money launderers, again though seems a stretch to me. Certainly that kind of access and indirect influence doesn’t seem worth the expense or effort of acquiring the company. Much cheaper to just bribe* someone within the company directly to just tell you whats up. And bribery (mainly within minimum wage CS reps) has happened before.
*of course they don’t say that they say “we would like to pay you as a consultant for your expertise in online games”
I don’t really see any of the reasons you mention as primary blockers. My main reason to be skeptical of the posited money laundering connection is that it would be inefficient and slow. Daybreak’s MMOs aren’t exactly blockbusters these days, how can you move even $10k/day in EQ2 gold RMT without someone noticing? And you need real players or RMT brokers to purchase that gold to effectively launder the money, you can’t sell it to yourself.
Actually the dollar amount is not really a problem for criminals who are well used to this kind of thing. The pattern is they start small then build over time until they find the detection threshold for the game. Particularly if they control both sides of the trade as is common with money laundering in games. So in effect they just need to know what the threshold per day/week to get flagged is. Once they know that number then they simply make as many fake account as needed to launder just below that threshold. As far as the game maker is concerned the games trading/ economy just picked up over a year or so.
Sadly we ("as in “we” game makers) have been pretty slow to figure all this out, so anti money laundering best practices, processes and safeguards have been slower than one would like.
I was talking total volume not individual transactions, you don’t think someone would notice if the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars started moving back and forth daily?
And like playingwithknives says, it wouldn’t be worth Vekselberg’s time to pick up ten thousand dollars off the street.
Vekselbergs wealth is so considerable and tangible I suspect DBG is far to small scale. Trumps hundreds of millions of cash purchases of propert mentioned elsewhere? That’s more nearer what we would see, and its less about laundering as offshoring assets, or disgusing Putin assets as Vekselberg.
That Chinese meth ring that was sanctioned earlier this week is more the scale i would expect from MMOGs.
Not if it built up over time, say two years? No. Particularly if for the first year or so you run those dozens of accounts as completely legit. Sadly this is the kind of sophistication organized crime gets up to.
Two years for $10k/day, OK. But again, it wouldn’t be worth his time to launder only $300k/month. The man has 13 billion dollars.
Oh I agree with you! It seems way below someone of his wealths level of interest. Its another reason why I think whatever Daybreak’s woes I dont think money laundering is a part of it. I was just giving my perspective and limited experience on how criminals do try and launder money on online games.
Yeah, I think it would be much smarter to launder money through an asian MMO with millions of players, where RMT is already fully accepted.
I mean, I can think of lots of ways to launder money through Daybreak. You could have fake employees, people who collect a paycheck but don’t do any work. You could pay for office supplies and servers, then never actually get them. But that’s all pretty small time for someone with 13 billion dollars net worth, he would want to move millions of dollars per year minimum.
Is this an ok time to chime in with how I think the Steam trading card market must be involved in money laundering? I just don’t understand who buys all the cards otherwise.
It would not surprise me. I assume Valve complies with law enforcement requests for information regularly around the issue.
So… apparently Daybreak is actually making a new game. I didn’t expect this.
You’re invited to a special first-look live stream event for a new Daybreak game. Join our dev team and be one of the first to get a behind the scenes look at what’s coming. We’ll see you there!
Dec 13, 2018 10am PST
Twitch
Also in Daybreak News: 70 laid off a few days ago.
Wow thats not good timing.
I’m not touching anything from Daybreak with a ten-foot pole.
I’ll give anything that’s not an MMO a look at release, not before.