[deleted]
How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
71–80 of 106 posts
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#72Similar to this story that broke today, where the FBI secretly ran an 'encrypted' messaging network as a two-year sting operation
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/8/22524307/anom-encrypted-me...
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady stuff I really don't understand how this is still possible with everyone having access to the Internet. They're pretty consistent [1]. It must be a bubble thing. 1. https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
Man that has taken my breath away. I'm pretty aware of how terrible the west can be (and how we can lie about it) but the sheer volume there is immense.
Worth emphasizing, this isn't "the West", this is just the US. Not that other parts of "the West" don't warrant their own lists, but framing it this way unnecessarily cushions the blow.
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#74I always wonder how this is legal in the U.S.A? Creating a fake bank in another country sounds like committing fraud in another country. At worst it can be they would be charged with money laundering themselves. What is the line of what is acceptable at entrapment in the United States? What stops any agency from creating permanent fake banks for example? I am glad drug lords get busted. I hate them, but I think if th…
It's legal because the law doesn't explicitly forbid it, I guess? Legality is a very flexible thing. Morality is another, but not necessarily the same. Anyway, generally speaking, law enforcement is granted things that citizens do not, e.g. visibly wearing weapons, owning and transporting narcotics, etc. But those things are obvious. Your last bit is very totalitarian, and I would have hoped we had intellectually gro…
Morality is totally flexible too, all you need to do to justify your atrocity is to make it help kids in some small way
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man that has taken my breath away. I'm pretty aware of how terrible the west can be (and how we can lie about it) but the sheer volume there is immense.
Worth emphasizing, this isn't "the West", this is just the US. Not that other parts of "the West" don't warrant their own lists, but framing it this way unnecessarily cushions the blow.
True true, I'm from the UK and so I see us as complicit in some of this but yes the US seems to have a pretty good go at being awful to fellow humans.
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Professionals already have banks for that. 90 million dollars? These are small fishes. They only helped the bigger ones go get rid of the competition and the effect on drug trafficking is near zero.
From another perspective, consider it probably did not cost $90 million to execute this plan. So overall, this is a net profit, and most likely cost effective.
Was the plan to make profit or to reduce drug trafficking?
Maybe they should reevaluate their goals.
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of decriminalizing personal amounts of drugs is to change police behavior because they are doing more harm than good in this area. You want to arrest the people who are dealing drugs or causing other crimes, not permanently ruining the lives of people who are doing no harm to society.
It's not strictly true that they do no harm to society. A lot of deeply addicted people are still objectively a blight on their surroundings, even if you view it as a health issue that calls for help rather than a moral issue that calls for punishment. Let's not underplay that damage drugs and addicts do. They're not the source of the problem, they shouldn't be the focus of the solution but let's be honest.
If you are saying addicts commit crimes e.g. burglary well then prosecute them for those crimes, that’s the only way I can take the “blight on their surroundings. Taken a different way, there are a lot of humans in the us who use other drugs, alcohol e.g. who are not considered a blight on their surroundings. Street drugs could be like those drug, and in fact during prohibition alcohol was an illegal “street” drug.
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not strictly true that they do no harm to society. A lot of deeply addicted people are still objectively a blight on their surroundings, even if you view it as a health issue that calls for help rather than a moral issue that calls for punishment. Let's not underplay that damage drugs and addicts do. They're not the source of the problem, they shouldn't be the focus of the solution but let's be honest.
Drugs aren't magical life-ruiners, that suddenly descend on unsuspecting healthy people and destroy them. The people you're describing are mostly already damaged by their own lives, hurting badly, and unable to emotionally function on their own. If you removed heroin or meth from the equation, they'd get drunk, instead... And they'd be roughly the same blight on their surroundings, regardless of their choice of subst…
Just to add - much of the damage of Heroin, and other drugs cut with fentanyl is precisely BECAUSE it is illegal.
Heroin is smuggled in from Colombia in some mule's intestines and then injected DIRECTLY into the user's bloodstream. This causes many different kinds of fatal blood clots and bacterial infections.
When Heroin was legal in this country (given as a cough medicine to young kids in the 1920s) it didn't lead to a reduction in the life expectancy of the users.
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#79Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady stuff, but many of these operations are even acknowledged like Iran-Contra where the government sold arms to the embargoed Khomeini government to generate black money to fund the Contras. > Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[2]…
> Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady stuff, but many of these operations are even acknowledged like Iran-Contra where the government sold arms to the embargoed Khomeini government to generate black money to fund the Contras. Another one, maybe the biggest known one, is when the US sent 12 bn to 14 bn in the form of 100 bills (yup, in bills) using a military plane to Iraq and these bills mostly al…
> (trying to insert the wikipedia and NY Times link to the story/stories but I get a "we have trouble processing your request, sorry" from HN)
Try base64 encoding them and pasting the results?
Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
#80Government provides an encrypted platform, a bank for money laundering, ... the supply chain has long been CIA side hustle. Basically private drug criminals are really federal contractors by now.