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FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

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Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#91

Post by burner9918 »

nindalf wrote: post #4
simple-thoughts wrote: post #3

Who in their right mind would share their wallet info with the FBI. That’s an easy way to get shortlisted.

Yeah! Don’t trust the man! The man is only interested in … something! There must be an ulterior motive in trying to bring scammers to book! Just think for a second. If someone has been scammed out of millions, you think they’re not going to talk to law enforcement about it? They wouldn’t only if they were perpetrating their own scam. At some point privacy nuts on HN have to really stop and think before typing.

Give the Minneapolis FBI whistleblower account a read and then think for a second

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/magazine/fbi-terrorism-te...

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#92

Post by hermitdev »

fortuna86 wrote: post #87
pjc50 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot fewer of those than you expect. And of course if you need to do that, you can never come back to see your family even for a visit.

statute of limitations?

I'm not a lawyer, but I think statute of limitations only protects you against charges being filed for a crime performed X years ago. It doesn't protect you if you run from charges for X years.

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#94

Post by eastbound »

vkou wrote: post #65
avsteele wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fascinating. It would seem to set up a situation where your incentive, if you suspect a Ponzi scheme, is to quietly withdraw your money early then keep your mouth shut. Unfortunate if true.

No, it doesn't, because all Ponzi schemes will always unravel. Keeping quiet isn't going to help you. What this does is it creates an incentive to not invest in a ponzi, period. Without this rule, it makes sense for me to invest into something that I think is a Ponzi, as long as I believe that I'll be able to cash out before it collapses.

Aren’t Ponzi schemes based on people being gullible? To protect gullible people from falling victim, we ask them to foresee in advance that they’ll fall into a Ponzi scheme…

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#95

Post by alasdair_ »

jcpham2 wrote: post #64
jsmith99 wrote: post #7

They also specifically ask for people who made withdrawals. In a fraud like this, those who lost money often recover from the people who got out in time. Eg almost 90% of the losses from Bernie Madoff were recovered by suing those who innocently withdrew their 'gains' before the ponzi scheme was discovered.

Trendon Shavers operated the first Bitcoin based Ponzi scheme out of Texas and it folded in 2014. When he defaulted he tried to claim Bitcoin wasn’t money, he wiped or lost all his records and access to the AWS hosting the scam, he perjured himself and claimed to have fully repaid “jcpham” under deposition. Liars gonna lie. My deposit and withdrawal addresses and the blockchain kinda shows no, I wasn’t made whole It…

I do wonder what the difference between running a bitcoin ponzi scheme and a ponzi scheme in Eve Online for Plex is.

The claim that Plex isn’t allowed to be traded for real money seems irrelevant since there is nothing in the bitcoin spec that allows trading for real money either.

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#96

Post by aaaaaA3 »

yellow_lead wrote: post #68
pjc50 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that everybody who uses a mixer is potentially participating in money laundering, sanctions evasion, etc. The whole premise is that you put money in and are given some different money out. But where does your money that you originally put in go? If it went to North Korea, congratulations on your crime.

I would be interested if you've heard of any prosecutions against individuals solely for using a mixer. In itself, I don't believe that it is illegal to use a mixer, but it is likely illegal to operate a mixer in most countries.

I've been convicted of money laundering in an European country for far less than using a mixer, so probably yes.

I merely sold 5000 euros worth of bitcoin to a Chinese OTC exchanger. There wasn't any real legal theory behind the charges. The court and prosecutor just assumed without any evidence that 1) the money must have been from criminal source and 2) I was using the Chinese exchanger specifically to obscure the source of those funds and not because he was someone I'd been working with since before cryptocurrencies existed.

I received a suspended sentence, wasn't worth appealing to recover the 5000 euros. Wasn't gonna get rid of the suspended sentence, there were counts I was totally guilty of.

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jerf wrote: post #63
mindslight wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the general concept, but trying to apply it to bank deposits is terrible. The whole point of banking regulations and FDIC insurance are to make it so banks are an abstraction where the customers don't have to care what a bank is invested in (for better and for worse). The straightforward way to reduce the risk of bank runs is to increase the reserve requirements which I believe is the exact opposite of what the…

The FDIC has already come perilously close to running out of money once. It can happen again. I believe risk can be moved around, but it can't be eliminated. This is probably fairly mainstream Wall Street analysis, too. I also believe that all attempts to move around risk must also increase it on the net, e.g., if you do the extremely popular financial move of taking a modest chance of modest loss and stuffing all th…

> FDIC has already come perilously close to running out of money once. It can happen again

The FDIC is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. It legally cannot run out of money.

Its fees are mostly an accountability mechanism on the bureaucracy. If the FDIC burns through its reserves and has to ask the Treasury for money, it failed at risk management. Some folks may get fired. But the bills will be paid.

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#98

Post by dragonwriter »

jerf wrote: post #63
mindslight wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the general concept, but trying to apply it to bank deposits is terrible. The whole point of banking regulations and FDIC insurance are to make it so banks are an abstraction where the customers don't have to care what a bank is invested in (for better and for worse). The straightforward way to reduce the risk of bank runs is to increase the reserve requirements which I believe is the exact opposite of what the…

The FDIC has already come perilously close to running out of money once. It can happen again. I believe risk can be moved around, but it can't be eliminated. This is probably fairly mainstream Wall Street analysis, too. I also believe that all attempts to move around risk must also increase it on the net, e.g., if you do the extremely popular financial move of taking a modest chance of modest loss and stuffing all th…

> The FDIC has already come perilously close to running out of money once.

The FDIC is legally backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, its liabilities beyond its own resources, to the extent that such may exist, are debts of the United States.

Which has a fundamental power to mint US currency, and thus cannot meaningfully “run out” of it.

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#99

Post by [deleted] »

gggggg5 wrote: post #84
icepat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is false. It's spelled the way it is spelled because that's how Estonian government wants names spelled. He's quite literally an Estonian national, go check the FBI report that was released.

Yes, he is an ethnic Russian who happens to be an Estonian national. "Russian" does not refer to the nationality, it is an ethnicity. There are vast amounts of Russian nationals who are not Russian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians In Estonia these people are referred to as Russians too, because that is what they are and what they identify as.

[deleted]

Re: FBI Looking for Hashflare Victims

#100

Post by themitigating »

pjc50 wrote: post #57
themitigating wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or move to another country without extradition, something I'm surprised more people don't do.

There are a lot fewer of those than you expect. And of course if you need to do that, you can never come back to see your family even for a visit.

Right but to avoid jail or even the potential of jail.
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