Privacy Oriented

First Digital International Bank (FDIB) was an offshore bank licensed in Montenegro in 2000 that ended up offering anonymous bank accounts to virtually anyone who wanted one. FDIB’s principals decribed the bank as a “private internet offshore banking solution offering the finest in high-interest paying offshore banking, also exchange provider for gold backed digital currencies, anonymous cash cards.” An excellent concept, I thought. Here I will explore what happened to this bank and its ties to Privacy.li and PrivateGoldTrader.com.

I opened many accounts with FDIB in 2005 and 2006, but I never funded the accounts. That is only because I did not have money to fund them at that time, or I would have. I was glad to see there was a bank with balls out there… They offered account funding by bank wire transfer or by e-currencies, such as e-gold, Pecunix and 1mdc - back in the good ol’ days, before e-gold and 1mdc were worthless. In mid-2005, PrivateGoldTrader started accepting “paper based instruments” on behalf of FDIB for easy account funding with cash, money orders or bank drafts (aka casheir’s cheques).

I never ran across a bad report about this bank from anyone - until it went offline. That lead me to assume they operated with integrity up until they stole most clients’ money (I assume). I read one report saying as much about his account on PowerPrivacy’s forums.

What follows here is a report I wrote about the bank’s demise for the site’s entry on AboutUs.org. For some reason, you later needed an account to access the information because it had been deemed as “Adult” content. That doesn’t make any sense, but here it is, out in the open… Read the rest of this entry »