Visa, Mastercard 'Directly Handling the Proceeds' of Child Sexual Abuse Material: Official Docs
A whistleblower asserted that Visa and Mastercard failed to prevent the laundering of funds related to child sexual abuse material and sex trafficking on the pornography website OnlyFans.
Reuters reported on Friday that the whistleblower, who works as a “senior compliance expert in the credit card and banking industries,” submitted a complaint in January 2023 with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN.
That report was previously undisclosed.
The whistleblower asserted that the two credit card behemoths were aware that users were paying for illegal content on OnlyFans since 2021 or earlier.
He accused them of “turning a blind eye to flows of illicit revenue.”
The complaint was also filed with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
The document said that several parties, including anti-trafficking experts, federal agents, and the whistleblower himself, told both Visa and Mastercard that their cards were being used to pay for illegal content on OnlyFans in several phone calls between 2021 and 2022.
One anti-trafficking group found a “high volume” of accounts on OnlyFans that had “common indicators” of child pornography or sex trafficking, according to the document.
The complaint asserted that because OnlyFans users directly pay pornography creators through the platform, Visa and Mastercards are “directly handling the proceeds of these illicit transactions.”
That would put them in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act since they “willfully failed” to introduce ways to stop money laundering through their networks.
Reuters could not “determine what action, if any, the agencies took in response to the complaint, which was filed under FinCEN’s anti-money laundering whistleblower program launched in 2021,” according to the outlet.
The whistleblower told Reuters in an interview that Visa and Mastercard had “the power to turn off the switch” but never discussed the complaint with him.
But both companies told Reuters that they had not heard of the complaint until Reuters reached out to them for comment.
A representative for Visa said that all merchants that are not in alignment with the firm’s “robust compliance requirements” are removed from the network.
The company employs the “best-in-class controls to deter, detect and remediate illegal activity,” the representative said.
A representative for Mastercard likewise said that the company has “strong governance standards through a comprehensive compliance program and strong internal controls.”
The representative explained, “If illegal activity is identified, we work with partners to act,” adding that the three agencies which received the complaint had not “referred any specific illegal activity for us to investigate or act on.”
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