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Officials arrest suspect in $4 billion Bitcoin money laundering scheme

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

#81

Post by mistermann »

MichaelGG wrote: post #77
grandalf wrote: post #29

Money "laundering" is used to hide transactions from view so that the parties involved in the transaction can avoid scrutiny or legal consequences for their actions. The DoD accounting scandal is an example of the US Government effectively laundering massive sums of money to evade accountability: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account... Also, governments use other tactics that are illegal in th…

What? Laundering often ends up with them paying taxes - for instance by putting tons of cash through a laundromat. Taxes then paid, the criminals are free to spend it as they wish. In fact, that's like, sort of the entire point of it. Money laundering (as an offence) is just a crude tool to make prosecutor's lives far, far, easier.

I suspect this is what's happening in Canada - billions of dollars of "under the radar" money is coming into Canada to buy real estate, but the construction & trades jobs it creates and resulting boost it provides to GDP makes the government happy to turn a blind eye to the source of this money or that they make no direct taxation revenue (and refuse to audit certain people who are obviously breaking the law).

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

#82

Post by celticninja »

mikeyouse wrote: post #76
celticninja wrote: post #2

They should at least say he is the owner of btc-e.com to give it context. The site was used by cyber criminals but it was also a legit operation, much like HSBC.

The difference is always the proportion, obfuscating that is pretty dishonest. HSBC laundered something like $9 billion for the cartels from 2006 - 2009.[1] As of Dec 2009, they had $2.36 trillion in assets.[2] Money laundering is clearly illegal and $9 billion isn't a small amount of money, but their business wouldn't have changed at all without that 0.3% of dirty cash. You can absolutely make the case that the pena…

Btce didn't exist solely to launder no way though. It was used by many people to legally trade cryptos.

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

#85

Post by jaclaz »

DannyBee wrote: post #49
jaclaz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Possible, but that set of facts do not appear to be alleged anywhere. If this was thought to be true, it would have definitely been alleged in the prosecution agreement. IE everything is entirely possible

I don't get it.

The Guardian published something [0]: >In some branches the boxes of cash being deposited were so big the tellers' windows had to be enlarged.

Rolling Stone published something different [1]: > ... 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 account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows."

The one doesn't exclude the other.

What is the problem?

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/14/hsbc-money-...

[1] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc-se...

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

#86

Post by placeybordeaux »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #70
placeybordeaux wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero, dash and zcash are the big three that have anonymity right? Any other big coins in the space?

Unfortunately Monero is the only one doing it right: all transactions are enforced private by default. Dash and zcash offer confidential transactions as an opt-in feature, but so few people use them that it draws additional scrutiny when they do. At this point in time it's "Solo Monero" for privacy.

Private by default, but the default of 2 foreign tx seems to be largely what people use. It'd be fun to trace it and start to show the probability that a given tx traces to a given public key. I imagine that the older tx have closer and closer to a uniform probability across older addresses. Might make for a good data vis project.

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

#87

Post by grandalf »

MichaelGG wrote: post #77
grandalf wrote: post #29

Money "laundering" is used to hide transactions from view so that the parties involved in the transaction can avoid scrutiny or legal consequences for their actions. The DoD accounting scandal is an example of the US Government effectively laundering massive sums of money to evade accountability: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account... Also, governments use other tactics that are illegal in th…

What? Laundering often ends up with them paying taxes - for instance by putting tons of cash through a laundromat. Taxes then paid, the criminals are free to spend it as they wish. In fact, that's like, sort of the entire point of it. Money laundering (as an offence) is just a crude tool to make prosecutor's lives far, far, easier.

https://www.irs.gov/uac/overview-money-laundering

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

#88

Post by vocatus_gate »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #86
vocatus_gate wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Monero is the only one doing it right: all transactions are enforced private by default. Dash and zcash offer confidential transactions as an opt-in feature, but so few people use them that it draws additional scrutiny when they do. At this point in time it's "Solo Monero" for privacy.

Private by default, but the default of 2 foreign tx seems to be largely what people use. It'd be fun to trace it and start to show the probability that a given tx traces to a given public key. I imagine that the older tx have closer and closer to a uniform probability across older addresses. Might make for a good data vis project.

Concurred. I hope they increase the default mandatory mixin level.

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

#89

Post by vocatus_gate »

jameskegel wrote: post #74
vocatus_gate wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Monero is the only one doing it right: all transactions are enforced private by default. Dash and zcash offer confidential transactions as an opt-in feature, but so few people use them that it draws additional scrutiny when they do. At this point in time it's "Solo Monero" for privacy.

Brethren

*fistbump

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

#90

Post by boobsbr »

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...

And nothing of consequence (at least of big significance) happened to HSBC.

They couldn't even implement FATCA in time, and government allowed the deadline to be pushed pushed forwards...

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