Liberty Reserve - officially offline and down!

[handsonhosting]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22680297

Liberty Reserve has been shut down after the arrest of it's founder, Arthur Budovsky, on suspicion of money laundering.

The question now will be what happens to the money that people had sitting in their accounts.

It's been hit and miss for years, and a high-risk money system to say the least, but it looks like this might be the nail in the coffin.

The website - https://www.libertyreserve.com - now shows a blank page, DNS offline.

A number of other virtual currency exchanges were also taken offline:
asianagold.com, exchangezone.com, moneycentralmarket.com and swiftexchanger.com. All above domains now point to domains owned by Shadowserver, a non-profit that fights cybercrime.

The shutdown of LibertyReserve most likey will mean a boon for the BitCoin group - but that too will face hurdles for the future.

 

[rds100]

Can't say i would miss them. Always seemed too shady to me.

 

[SenseiSteve]

It'd be tough to wake up to this news with thousands sitting in their account!

Co-founder Mitchell Rossetti said he had about $28,000 sitting in his business's Liberty Reserve account at the time the site went offline.

This reminds me of so many well established firms in Saint Louis during the dot com boom that went belly up and simply closed and locked their doors with no warning whatsoever - leaving thousands of consumers without Internet connections. The founder of the very first ISP I used in the mid nineties gambled away all the revenues, didn't pay his backbone provider and had to shut down. Graft and corruption continues to take its toll even today.

 

[easyhostmedia]

This reminds me of Kim dot Com, but this time i bet the authorities have all their facts straight

 

[easyhostmedia]

more info here

http://news.yahoo.com/7-charged-6b-online-money-223624938.html

quotes from the linked report

In an online chat captured by law enforcement, Kats admitted Liberty Reserve was illegal and noted that authorities in the United States knew it was "a money-laundering operation that hackers use."

Budovsky and Kats have previous convictions on state charges related to an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to court papers. After that case, they decided to move their operation to Costa Rica

 

[handsonhosting]

Yup - the US has been trying to get these guys for a while, and it looks like now that Spain nabbed them, the US will be able to extradite and have them face charges here.

 

[easyhostmedia]

Yup - the US has been trying to get these guys for a while, and it looks like now that Spain nabbed them, the US will be able to extradite and have them face charges here.

Just hope Spain works with US authorities, so we dont end up with another Kim Dot Com cockup

 

[Iniz]

LR now shows the US gov takedown notice
http://libertyreserve.com/index.html

 

[handsonhosting]

LR now shows the US gov takedown notice
http://libertyreserve.com/index.html

Fancy little page hehee I'm surprised that their not taking advantage of exposure and actually LINKING to their main website rather than just an image with generic info.

 

[easyhostmedia]

Fancy little page hehee I'm surprised that their not taking advantage of exposure and actually LINKING to their main website rather than just an image with generic info.

they did the same thing when they took down megaupload.com, but with the FBI badge

 

[SuperVDS]

Still many digital currency's online and I don't think systems like this can ever all be fully shut down.

 

[TimeRider]

How could Liberty Reserve be down? It has been there for years. Not a good news.

 

[easyhostmedia]

How could Liberty Reserve be down? It has been there for years. Not a good news.

Easy, it was used as a money laundering operation by the founder for many years

 

[JessicaHoll21]

The law will always find the illegal acts. I think he deserve to get arrested.

 

[hostfly]

LR was the preferred payment gateway and many ppl lost their money

 

[ssgsunny]

I lost big amount in LR.

 

[bunnykins]

Never heard of it so guess I will not miss it.