Thursday, July 17, 2014

ALERT: UNLICENSED BITCOIN "BANK" IS SOLICITING IN MIAMI


Please consider this an alert for unlicensed banking activity, with the operators advertising the services of a Bank that they have designated Bitcoin Bank US. According to Internet postings on Twitter, the solicitation claims that "Bitcoin Bank US", (with superscript indicating that it is a registered trademark*), is available to distribute its debit cards to the public. The "bank" claims that its clients are protected by FDIC insurance and something called cyber-threat insurance, and that it offers a globally-accepted debit card to its clients.

Neither the Florida Division of Financial Regulation, which licenses and regulates state-chartered banks, nor any of the Federal agencies (ICC, FDIC) have any record of issuing a banking license, under the above name. My own exhaustive Internet search cannot find any reference anywhere to
BITCOIN BANK US.

In the State of Florida, Fla. Stat.  § 655.922 prohibits any entity from using the term "bank," unless it has obtained the appropriate license as a financial institution. How do the organizers intend to evade the law ? On June 18 of this year, they formed** a limited liability company; the name:
BITCOIN B.N.K. US LLC
Note that they deleted a letter from the word, so as not to set off alarms; However, they are using the term 'bank' in their deceptive advertising, and that advertising appears to violate state law.

Please note that the so-called bank's listed address is a post office box in a store in a strip mall in Miami. Govern yourselves accordingly, gentlemen as this seems to be a shell company, recently formed, with no assets, no physical brick-and-mortar location, no website, no track record,  no banking license, and with no regulatory agency overseeing its operation, asking for your money for a debit card.
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*I can find no record of an existing trademark.
** The corporation's filing can be found on the Florida Secretary of State search page:
 http://www.sunbiz.org/





5 comments:

  1. Amazing that all of this shit comes from Miami but how naive can some idiot be to organise a none registered bank. Maybe it is in one of the West Indies Islands?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Department of Financial Services denies that any application for a Bitcoin Bank has been received in the USA.

    ReplyDelete
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