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You see the difference between helping out your buddies on these forums and money laundering, can be figured out by one simple thing. Do you profit from it or not?
If you are profiting from transferring money back and forth you are no longer just a nice average joe, you are a criminal.
I think there's two groups of people that get together for trades on here.
There are those who have money stuck on different sites, and can help each other out by trading money to sites where they want it. Mutually beneficial.
Then there are those who have large amounts of money they want to move around and/or cash out, who may not be able to find a partner that needs the opposite. That's where guys charging vig come in. These guys, for the most part, don't need money moved anywhere themselves, likely because they're non-US players who have no problem moving money. There are all sorts of risks involved - being scammed, having play requirements to take newly transferred money out, having money frozen by sites (just ask Kyleb), etc. Not to mention all the time involved. I don't think it's unreasonable for these people to ask for some compensation.
As to "helping out your buddies", I'm sure that happens all the time on here...more than likely quietly by PM. People in this thread for the most part don't really know a damn thing about each other.
It was one thing when the whole Neteller fiasco crashed down and there were lots of people helping out Americans with their money stuck without charging them. That was a short-term problem that had a lot of people stuck. And many of those that helped got their NT accounts frozen and even shut down as a result.
What we're dealing with now is far from a short-term problem. This could go on for a long time. What the vig-charging money traders are doing is moving money for those who make a profit from the game, for the most part. It's not like they're charging to move money to a relief fund in Africa...it's for POKER!!
Illegal? What's your point? Would you rather that all of these guys pulled out and stopped moving money? If you don't like it, don't deal with them.