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Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

arstechnica.com

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Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#31

Post by nannal »

joosters wrote: post #23
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're keeping coins on any exchange -- even Coinbase -- they are no longer your coins. You've just loaned them. And you may eventually discover why that is a very bad idea. No one thinks "It could happen to me" until it's too late. Stop keeping coins on exchanges. Stop using third party wallets and other software. If you want to invest in coins because they might go up, that might make sense, but at least treat i…

If you're keeping coins on any exchange -- even Coinbase -- they are no longer your coins. You've just loaned them. And you may eventually discover why that is a very bad idea. Since you have to use an exchange to obtain or sell crypto currency, this 'advice' is just pointing out the terrible flaws in bitcoin/ethereum/whatever. There will be plenty of users who were in the middle of cashing in/cashing out and have no…

Well you don't "have" to use an exchange, if you want to meet in person and hand me a big sack full of coins, or your car, I can transfer you bitcoin.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#32

Post by jaclaz »

_e wrote: post #25
samfriedman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just like how HSBC physically expanded their teller windows to make it easy for Mexican drug cartels to make cash deposits. I can't seem to find any mention of this in the linked article?

The bank didn't adjust the teller windows but people designed boxes to perfectly fit through the teller windows. From a Rolling Stone article -- The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single…

>The bank didn't adjust the teller windows but people designed boxes to perfectly fit through the teller windows.

The one thing does not exclude the other.

It is entirely possible that previous windows were too small and, after they were enlarged, in order to optimize the deposit operation some special boxes were put in use.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#33

Post by vocatus_gate »

repomies6999 wrote: post #30
nubela wrote: post #26

This is the inherent problem with Bitcoin. It's just not anonymous! Imagine a dollar that has a history of every transaction written on it. Monero is the coin you want.

So if the guy had ran a monero exchange he wouldn't have been arrested, I guess?

He's not wrong, Monero is the only crypto (currently) enforcing fully private transactions by default. In a reddit thread about the AB bust someone pointed out that they weren't able to determine the amount of Monero he had, vs. listing exact amounts of his Eth, zcash, etc.

edit for clarification: I wasn't saying he wouldn't have been caught, only that Monero offers additional benefits beyond some of the other coins and help conceal transaction history.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#34

Post by nannal »

nannal wrote: post #27
r721 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Alexander Vinnik" comes from updated Reuters article (with photo): http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-idUSK...

Worth noting that BTC-e owner's name was Alexander and he was supposedly Russian.

https://twitter.com/ReutersTech/status/890232366320553984

It's confirmed

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#37

Post by flatline »

nubela wrote: post #26

This is the inherent problem with Bitcoin. It's just not anonymous! Imagine a dollar that has a history of every transaction written on it. Monero is the coin you want.

I don't think anonymity counts for much in this case. Anyone running this big of an operation has a huge exposure on more fronts than the cryptocurrency end of things.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#38

Post by hackermailman »

r721 wrote: post #18
joosters wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know for sure that this is related to btc-e ? It's the most likely suspect (it is currently 'down for maintenance' and it was started in 2011, the same year mentioned in the AP story), but I can't find any concrete evidence of who the owners of btc-e actually were. The site has always hidden its origins, and the only information I could find was that the founders' names are supposedly Aleksey and Alexander, ba…

Confirmed by Reuters now: >BREAKING: Russian man arrested in Greece connected to BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange - sources https://twitter.com/ReutersTech/status/890232366320553984 UPD >A Russian national arrested in Greece on Wednesday on suspicion of laundering criminal funds by switching them into bitcoins is a key person behind the BTC-e crypto-currency exchange, two sources close to the exchange told Reuters. http…

BTC-E was run out of Bulgaria in the beginning, surprised this guy didn't learn from the dozens of arrests of Russian credit card processors who violated US gambling laws and went on vacation/lured to meetings into extradition areas like Greece or Turkey. This arrest was apparently over laundering Ransomware coins http://www.newsbtc.com/2017/07/26/btc-e-responsible-launderi...

BTC-E was famous for it's one word replies to technical support tickets like "works" and "try" when he wanted you to try something again, and of course the troll box on the front page that was a never ending source of problems like naive users being fished for information on their account details or tricked into pumping up the value of some altcoin.

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#39

Post by MichaelBurge »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #33
repomies6999 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if the guy had ran a monero exchange he wouldn't have been arrested, I guess?

He's not wrong, Monero is the only crypto (currently) enforcing fully private transactions by default. In a reddit thread about the AB bust someone pointed out that they weren't able to determine the amount of Monero he had, vs. listing exact amounts of his Eth, zcash, etc. edit for clarification: I wasn't saying he wouldn't have been caught, only that Monero offers additional benefits beyond some of the other coins…

Is that even in the case where the server is seized, or when "Dread Pirate Roberts" leaves his laptop with passwords & encryption keys open when being arrested? Or just by default if the attacker is looking at network activity but doesn't have access to the machine?

Re: Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

#40

Post by rayiner »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #13

"Conventional financial institutions comply with anti-money laundering regulations that make it difficult for criminal organizations to use their payment infrastructure." Yes, yes of course. Just like how HSBC physically expanded their teller windows to make it easy for Mexican drug cartels to make cash deposits. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/17/hsbc-execut...

Source? It sounds like a game-of-telephone version of what's in the HSBC deferred prosecution agreement: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2012/.... Notably, the inference of intent is completely different under your version.

> 50. The Department alleges, and HSBC Bank USA and HSBC Holdings do not contest, that, beginning in 2008, an investigation conducted by HSI’s El Dorado Task Force, in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, identified multiple HSBC Mexico accounts associated with BMPE activity. The investigation further revealed that drug traffickers were depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bulk U.S. currency each day into HSBC Mexico accounts. In order to efficiently move this volume of cash through the teller windows at HSBC Mexico branches, drug traffickers designed specially shaped boxes that fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows. The drug traffickers would send numerous boxes filled with cash through the teller windows for deposit into HSBC Mexico accounts. After the cash was deposited in the accounts, peso brokers then wire transferred the U.S. dollars to various exporters located in New York City and other locations throughout the United States to purchase goods for Colombian businesses. The U.S. exporters then sent the goods directly to the businesses in Colombia.

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