Shell Game: A deceptive and evasive action or ploy. For the purposes of this story, Shell Game references the acquisition of a large number of Visa/Mastercard merchant accounts under different people’s names for the purpose of spreading transactions across each individual merchant account for the purpose of staying below fraud thresholds on any individual merchant account. That way credit card bureaus are less likely to detect a pattern of fraud to alert authorities and take internal actions to shut down the accounts.
Signers: Signers are individuals that sign their names on merchant accounts at the direction of a UBO to create the illusion that each merchant account is a separate business, as legally they are. In many cases, the signers are completely unaware of the real use of the merchant account they signed up for, and the result is that they often end up with unexpected tax liabilities along with credit issues due to merchant accounts getting terminated due to excessive chargebacks, adding them to the match list.
