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Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

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Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#201

Post by ClumsyPilot »

acdha wrote: post #125
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> business with criminals, don't buy crime futures Is your Crime same as my Crime? Suppose I am a software developer living in Russia and I don’t want to pay taxes to a government that commits war crimes, is that a crime? Should a western bank be preventing that? Suppose you were protesting in a dictatorship, and as a result your assets were seized, you have a criminal record, maybe you are collecting donations, shou…

> Suppose I am a software developer living in Russia and I don’t want to pay taxes to a government that commits war crimes, is that a crime? Should a western bank be preventing that? Yes, because that activity cannot be distinguished from thd Russian government evading financial sanctions. It sucks for the innocent party but there are many victims of their government with more serious grievances. > Suppose you were p…

> Yes, because that activity cannot be distinguished from thd Russian government evading financial sanctions.

I am not sure this is true, but regardless I was going for a moral angle - the question was basically: Suppose a western bank was 100% certain that it was not Russian government avoiding sanctions, would that still apply?

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#202

Post by xadhominemx »

segmondy wrote: post #137
mattmaroon wrote: post #23

Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would ne…

USA doesn't care about North Korea. We love to have Boogeymen. What would the military industrial complex do and be without our Boogeymen?

We care very much about North Korea as they have nuclear weapons and share a land border with our ally

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#203

Post by manquer »

pjkundert wrote: post #200
manquer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our banks don’t work with Iranians or North Koreans , with crypto it is also about who not how much

“don’t work with …” You seem strangely certain of that. It is unlikely that you should be.

I am fairly sure that there is no formal way to send money from United States to Iran or North Korea by an individual or even a business without special government authorization.

Happy to be proven wrong if there ways to send/receive money to countries via banks today.

When we say North Korean or Iran we generally don’t mean people with those ethnic background[1] or even citizenship who have legal, physical and banking presence outside[2] these countries. We typically mean legal entities (both individuals and businesses) who are present within these regimes

Are they sanctions perfect ? Of course not, but they are still far better than what crypto exchanges do today

[1] that would be racist that is not the purpose of those sanctions

[2] the governments of these other geographies persumably have controls and oversight into these people

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#204

Post by manquer »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #198
manquer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there evidence of discrimination ? Are banks rejecting services because of age/race/gender/ethnicity etc ? KYC to reject basis legality of the source seems an acceptable tradeoff to live in a civilized society?

Age/race/gender/ethnicity and other legally defined protected classes are not the only possible instances of discrimination. An example is a person sending money to family in a country where there is less rule of law and they get suspected of terrorism (regardless of firm evidence), or someone selling sex services that gets dropped because a bank does not want to deal with them. Or it could just be errors in the prog…

In an ideal world, would I like to see drugs or sex work decriminalized and legally transacted ?

Yes, but that is not the world we live in , most democratic elected governments have unfortunately not done that. unable to pay/receive for businesses related to them is sadly no different than any other illegal activity.

We don’t remove KYC to make these activities acceptable , we decriminalize them directly, removing KYC allows a lot of other illegitimate things we don’t want as well

Electronic or paper transfer is vital function of legal life, Monetary supply and regulation is core function of a government and it is under no obligation to support illegal activities.

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#205

Post by pton_xd »

manquer wrote: post #194
pton_xd wrote: post #22

Our own banks commit 10x more fraud than that. See TD Bank money laundering case ongoing, could reach $4 billion in fines. Wells Fargo $3 billion in fines for fraudulent charges on fake accounts. JPMorgan Chase $1 bil settlement for UST and precious metal futures fraud. And those are just the ones I can remember from the last few years.

Our banks don’t work with Iranians or North Koreans , with crypto it is also about who not how much

Standard Chartered bank was fined $1.1 bil a few years ago for laundering money for Iran. They were fined for the same thing in 2012.

Deutsche Bank was fined $2 bil in 2023 for laundering for Russia. They were fined for the same thing in 2017. UBS was fined $4 bil for laundering and tax evasion in 2019. French bank BNP Paribas paid $9 bil in fines in 2014 for laundering for Iran. Credit Suisse has been caught / fined for laundering for Iran. And so on. Our banks work with all of these banks.

Looking outside the EU, I'd guess you could also transfer money to / from Iran by just making a stop over in Hong Kong or the UAE. But how would we know? The banking system is a black box of fraud.

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#206

Post by godelski »

throwup238 wrote: post #24
mattmaroon wrote: post #23

Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would ne…

Most of North Korea’s traffic is routed through China so it’d require cutting the latter off from the internet. With the amount of submarine cables connecting China to other countries, it wouldn’t be very feasible.

Not to mention that lots of data is sent wirelessly.

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#207

Post by fastasucan »

mattmaroon wrote: post #23

Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would ne…

>North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would never come back.

Do you think that the only place north korean hackers operate from is inside north Korea?

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#208

Post by manquer »

pton_xd wrote: post #205
manquer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our banks don’t work with Iranians or North Koreans , with crypto it is also about who not how much

Standard Chartered bank was fined $1.1 bil a few years ago for laundering money for Iran. They were fined for the same thing in 2012. Deutsche Bank was fined $2 bil in 2023 for laundering for Russia. They were fined for the same thing in 2017. UBS was fined $4 bil for laundering and tax evasion in 2019. French bank BNP Paribas paid $9 bil in fines in 2014 for laundering for Iran. Credit Suisse has been caught / fined…

they were caught and fined, that doesn’t happen with crypto exchanges?

While under the American umbrella of regulation neither bank is American is kind of notable I suppose.

Perhaps European regulators are not as strong is more a issue rather than regulations are not a good idea?

It took American financial systems for example to bring down the former head of FIFA Sepp Blatter , he was operating in Switzerland with no consequences and the history of Swiss banks working with nazis is not something one can forget either .

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#209

Post by acdha »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #201
acdha wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose I am a software developer living in Russia and I don’t want to pay taxes to a government that commits war crimes, is that a crime? Should a western bank be preventing that? Yes, because that activity cannot be distinguished from thd Russian government evading financial sanctions. It sucks for the innocent party but there are many victims of their government with more serious grievances. > Suppose you were p…

> Yes, because that activity cannot be distinguished from thd Russian government evading financial sanctions. I am not sure this is true, but regardless I was going for a moral angle - the question was basically: Suppose a western bank was 100% certain that it was not Russian government avoiding sanctions, would that still apply?

I think in that hypothetical case you could say it’s morally okay with some debate over how much participating in the economy matters, but I don’t think that tells us much about the real world because how would you ever get anywhere close to 100% certainty that you are actually talking to the person you believe you are, they aren’t compromised, and that the government isn’t waiting to confiscate those funds? Unless the goal is just to stash money in a foreign account until you can escape the country there’s no way to avoid a fairly high level of risk trying to use it in country.

Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat

#210

Post by shakna »

jimz wrote: post #72
shakna wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Australia's national money laundering assessment [0] is not virtue signalling as a cover for racism. There's a history of money laundering for terrorism, child exploitation, slavery, and drug trafficking. There's also a history of arrests, and government task force projects to try and change that. [0] https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-...

There was also the "white Australia policy" though. And China is the perfect scapegoat, like NK, since they seldom make public statements, and when they do, the west tend to treat it as across the board false. But the top Area Studies scholars are not working for the government. I hang out in quite a few Chinese telegram chats (mostly sysadmins and just bullshitting - the term translates well literally but carries a…

Worked with the Stolen Generation. Trying to fix the massive gaping problems that Australia's racist policies have caused in the past. I'm the last to deny that there are racist problems.

However, the money laundering problems have primarily come from China. That's what the history shows, and why there's the focus there. The country itself isn't being blamed. The absence of protections between Australia and China, across regulatory borders, is what is being blamed.

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