Havana Laugh

Thanks to all the Bounty Boys (Football Elite, Skeeve, Football Investor and The Football Analyst) for their prompt handling of the bounty requests.

The disbursement of the FTL funds is almost complete, although not without some issues. All of the big winners have been settled, but for one entry, I received the message "This recipient is currently unable to receive money" while Fairfranco was again overpaid (I paid him double for his November monthly win).

Fortunately Stephen hadn't yet gone on his travels, and being a man of integrity, refunded the overpaid amount. Thanks to Mr. Franco for indeed being Fair.

The most serious issue faced was with "Club Havana's" transfer.

I received an email from PayPal's compliance department on Sunday, with concerns over the payment:

To ensure that activity and transactions comply with current regulations, PayPal is requesting that you provide the following information via email to compliancetransactions@paypal.com:

1. Please explain the meaning of "Havana" within the message of payment xxxxx attempted on June 05, 2015 in the amount of $999.99, including a complete and detailed explanation of the goods or services you intended to purchase.

It took me a few seconds to realise what the concern was, but of course it was the word "Havana" which apparently is still something of a dirty word with the US Government, even though relations with Cuba are improving fast, and there were concerns that the activity:

may be in violation of United States regulations administered by the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Although I had never heard the acronym previously, "OFAC" was pretty close to what I said at the time.

Combined with a new addition to the Cassini family later that day and someone attempting to use my credit card details on-line, it was an interesting weekend.