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In all of these cases, the bitcoin vendors did not register on FinCEN's website. Registering is simple but by doing so the person/company is required to check I

• cgb223 9y ago
  How would one launder money with bitcoin? What would that look like?
  • wolco 9y ago
    Buy bitcoin using cash at local bitcoin atm. Put bitcoin in a mixer. Cash out bitcoin and declare the income.
    • mirimir 9y ago
      The last step doesn't work. I mean, you might as well declare the cash as income. You'd be pressed to explain where either came from. More useful would be to buy Bitcoin with cash, mix, and then invest assets somewhere anonymously. But it's a hard problem, because wherever assets appear in meatspace, there's typically the need to explain their origin. That's where many people get caught. Such as Tomáš Jiříkovský of Sheep Marketplace infamy.
      • ajmurmann 9y ago
        The problem actually seems worse on the Bitcoin side to new than in meat space. Someone might have a Saas business that receives a lot of payments in BTC. Interestingly there isn't all that much traffic. You know like in mani pedi salons that make surprising amounts of money despite never being really packed. It's harder to notice that with a Saas business especially if the logs aren't kept for long. However, it would be strange to see that most of the customers BTC addresses only ever received money from a source other than an exchange and all just used it to pay for the Saas. It would be easier to launder money by just allowing "customers" to pay by mailinh cash to a PO box.
        • mirimir 9y ago
          OK, so you just run your SaaS business as Nomen Nescio, using anonymously leased servers, managing them through VPNs and Tor, and so on. Then Bitcoin go somewhere.
          • ajmurmann 9y ago
            The money still isn't laundered though which was the premise of the money laundering operation.
            • mirimir 9y ago
              Oh, I get it. You were proposing the SaaS business as the front. I was thinking of it as the income source. Well, it could be an all-too-typical small startup, losing money to build market share. You could pose as the major investor, living in some war zone, and funding through Bitcoin. But I doubt that it would pass an audit. Actually laundering money through Bitcoin is nontrivial. You can replace networks of agents, moving cash around, with anonymous Bitcoin wallets. But you may still need to explain where the assets came from.
        • csomar 9y ago
          You can create credit cards on the fly and charge them with bitcoin. Another possible action is to use the money for advertising, product development, etc... and build a somewhat legitimate business. The business might not be quite profitable but that's the price you pay for laundering?
          • mirimir 9y ago
            Yes. But spending lots of money in meatspace attracts attention.
      • astrodust 9y ago
        Make yourself a Bitcoin "lottery" and win it.
        • mirimir 9y ago
          That's good :) But maybe too obvious. Anonymous lottery, right? Suspicious.
          • astrodust 9y ago
            There's a lot of things about the Bitcoin ecosystem that are intrinsically suspicious starting at the very beginning where the creator is unknown.
  • dllthomas 9y ago
    Buy bitcoin, put in mixer, use it to pay for accounts from your "legitimate" SaaS product.
    • csomar 9y ago
      Through virtual credit card numbers you charged from crypto.