>According to a March indictment, the pair disguised marijuana transactions as purchases of dog toys, carbonated drinks, diving gear, and other products unrelated to cannabis. >Lawyers for the two men say this is ludicrous because the alleged bank fraud had no victims. The customers knew exactly what they were paying for. The banks involved suffered no losses—in fact, they made money from transaction fees.
>...co-conspirators got around issuing banks' rules by routing payments through fake merchants nominally based outside the United States. When an Eaze customer ordered marijuana, the email receipt would say something like "You will see a charge from '
absolutsoda.com.'" The
absolutsoda.com website showed carbonated beverages that were theoretically for sale. But the feds say this was a sham; in reality,
absolutsoda.com was just a front for a marijuana dispensary.
>set up a number of businesses like this with names like
diverkingdom.com and
happypuppybox.com, purporting to sell diving equipment or dog toys.
>In a classic case of bank fraud, someone uses deception to get money that rightfully belongs to someone else. Here, by contrast, the source of the funds—the customer—was an entirely willing participant. The supposed victim—the bank—was a mere conduit for the funds and didn't lose a penny. The fact that a bank might have preferred not to process a payment doesn't mean it got defrauded, the defendants argue.