Tuesday, June 05, 2007

U.S. Government to Allow NETeller To Return US Payments

Online payment specialist NETeller has announced that it has agreed a plan with the US Government to distribute millions of dollars belonging to American customers that were frozen after the company and its founders were charged with racketeering and other charges related to online gambling in February.

OnlineCasinoNews.com reports that the UK-based company said a plan that the United States Attorney’s Office has agreed to would allow US customers to access their NETeller accounts online for a certain time and make a request for their funds.

The company said that, in accordance with its terms of use, no interest on account balances will be paid but that it would also not charge fees for processing these requests. Funds will be distributed either by electronic transfer to the bank account on record with NETeller or by a cheque to be sent to a mailing address as confirmed by the customer. If an American customer has a bank account already registered with NETeller, funds will be transferred electronically subject to a confirmation by the customer that the registered bank account remains valid.

NETeller also stated that US customers would receive the entire balance of funds in their account with no requests for partial payments processed and that they would not be able to use their accounts for any transaction other than to request their funds.

“The agreement on the distribution plan represents a milestone in our cooperation with US authorities,” said Ron Martin, President and CEO of NETeller.

“While we are disappointed not to have been able to return funds to our US customers at this point, we believe that the steps we have made in our discussions are significant and we hope to be able to announce further progress with the United States Attorney’s Office by July 13, 2007.”