Even if this credit card company ultimately has to defend itself at trial, there will be no criminal penalties and whatever fine or judgment entered against it will pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars it has earned being the financial conduit for p.o.r.n. payments, illegal and legal.

The CEO should be held criminally liable because he was aware of it, but will never be subject to criminal proceedings, because those kinds of things don’t happen in the real world.

Visa

Alfred F. Kelly Jr.

Visa ‘Intended to Help’ p.o.r.nhub and Its Parent Company Monetize Child p.o.r.n, Judge Finds in Allowing Case to Move Forward

In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor is liable for the distribution of child p.o.r.nography on p.o.r.nhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.

On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business acts and practices — by processing payments for child p.o.r.n. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)

In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with MindGeek to monetize child p.o.r.nography. Specifically, he wrote, “Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized child p.o.r.n”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially benefit from child p.o.r.n that can be inferred from [Visa’s] decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount of child p.o.r.n”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child p.o.r.n” by “knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”

According to Ackman, after he read the Times’ story about Fleites and Pornub, he reached out to the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard to express concerns about their part in enabling MindGeek’s business. Shortly afterward, both companies cut off consumer payment processing to MindGeek’s sites; within “a day or so, MindGeek removed >10m illegal videos, 80% of its content,” the hedge fund manager said. However, they both soon reactivated business-to-business payments for the purchase of ads on MindGeek sites and for subscriptions to “premium” content, representing about 90% of the company’s revenue, per Ackman.

Ackman wrote that Visa CEO Alfred Kelly “should know that the majority of child trafficking victims are from lower-income families including Black and Brown families. I would recommend that Visa’s board, and separately Mr. Kelly, should hire independent white collar and criminal counsel.” He concluded the thread with, “Et tu, @Mastercard?”

– Source

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