Why Did a Chinese Peroxide Company Pay $1B for a Talking Cat?

Re:Why Did a Chinese Peroxide Company Pay $1B for a Talking ... by cwilkes on Wednesday May 24, 2017 @10:24AM (#14410212)

That does sound like an interesting way of doing it except that the distributor (Apple, Amazon, Google) can be subpoenaed and the exact amount of money, probably along with who spent it, can be found. So maybe it works on small time operations but it would fall apart a lot faster than traditional money laundering fronts like nail salons and other cash businesses.

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Re:Why Did a Chinese Peroxide Company Pay $1B for a Talking ... by ChuckMcM on Wednesday May 24, 2017 @12:44PM (#14411357)

You sound skeptical :-). Take that thinking through to the next step. What does Google, Amazon, or Apple know?

They know the publisher of the game who is getting revenue from it.

The know the thousands/tens of thousands/millions of accounts which has processed a purchase (probably hundreds of purchases per user) through it.

Some fraction of the user base is 'legit' which is to say they are playing for their own reasons.

I think the only way you prosecute that is that you find someone who was told, take this money, buy an iTunes/Play /Amazon gift card, use that card to buy items in this specific game. and finding that person would be very difficult. The dealers could literally hand gift cards to addicts for their kids to play their game while they are high.

I agree that there are pretty 'classic' schemes that could process more money but some of these online games are pretty amazing at the numbers they pull in monthly. Hard to explain a nail salon doing 5 million dollars a month in revenue.

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