Free Republic

Will FDIC Regulations Shut Down the Prepaid Card Industry? We have written about prepaid debit cards several times in recent months, but this week we saw the latest news that could throw a monkey wrench in the burgeoning prepaid card industry. As reported by PaymentsSource, Bancorp Inc., one of the biggest issuers of prepaid cards with $4.7 billion in assets, saw its shares drop 30 percent when the company agreed to curtail its prepaid card activity as part of a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). A 22-page consent order mandates that Bancorp institute a number of changes...

<p>Billionaires George Soros and Michael Dell have been dragged into a nasty lawsuit against former NBA great Magic Johnson over his prepaid credit card, the Magic Card.</p> <p>The moguls are principals of OneWest Bank, which entrepreneur Reed Wallace is accusing, along with the former NBA great Johnson, of stealing his concept for a Magic-backed credit card.</p>

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

Raising the specter of “foreign money” boosting your opponent’s campaign has become a bipartisan tactic in the past two election cycles. In 2008, conservatives alleged that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was fueled in part by illegal cash from Iran and other hostile lands. Two years later, Obama and his allies ominously suggested that secret streams of foreign cash – this time from corporations – were boosting Republicans. Neither side was able to offer much compelling evidence to support their arguments, and both endured accusations of stoking jingoistic sentiment for partisan advantage. So now an unlikely team of foreigners with no...