7 ms·

Yeah my favourite pharmacy just closed - pretty sure it was a money laundering op. Huge warehouse, fully staffed, inventory from pharmacy to electronics, hardwa

Yeah my favourite pharmacy just closed - pretty sure it was a money laundering op. Huge warehouse, fully staffed, inventory from pharmacy to electronics, hardware to perishable goods (but just random retail packages). In a couple years I've never seen more than 1 other car in the 50-space parking lot. Amazing service. And of course there's no victims in money laundering. It's a victimless crime that has the sole purpose of helping prosecutors when they aren't able to find a real crime.

reitanqild 9y ago
And of course there's no victims in money laundering. It's a victimless crime that has the sole purpose of helping prosecutors when they aren't able to find a real crime. While the laundry operation is victimless it often directly assists crimes that have very real crimes: Trafficking Drug abusers [0] Illegal weapons trade [1] [0]: Esp. as since it is currently illegal they suffer a lot as getting their drugs means dealing with people you normally don't want to deal with and doing stuff you rather wouldn't do. [1]: no, I'm still pro guns. I just don't want them sold illegally.
- atemerev 9y ago
  Right. And cars manufacturers assist kidnappers and bank robbers escapes. And cell phones can be used as remote detonators. And end-to-end cryptography... no, this is an abomination, you shouldn't even think of it unless you willingly submit your private keys to the appropriate government agency for safe escrow to aid lawful investigations! (I would have put /s here, but all these lines will be used at face value soon enough).
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    And cars manufacturers assist kidnappers and bank robbers escapes. No. Because there never is any planning between the manufacturer and the bank robbers. Remember: we are talking about money laundering operations here, not accidentally receiving stolen goods without knowing. Can these use be abused? Yes. Very much. Should they still exist? Yes.
    - atemerev 9y ago
      Yes. Two questions are: did the BTC-e founder knew that he is helping to legalize proceeds for MtGox hack? Or some general hack? Or just he didn't make due diligence on the source of money and just agreed to help for a fee? And second — what authority the US government has in running the trial? Why the case is not tried in Japanese or Russian or Cyprus courts?
      - reitanqild 9y ago
        I'm of no opinion here.
  - piaste 9y ago
    Money laundering is knowingly assisting criminal activities. You're actively hiding where the money comes from, exactly because you know it comes from illegal sources. (If the source were legal but embarrassing, all you'd need is standard bank privacy, not active laundering.) The car-related analogy isn't a car manufacturer. It isn't even an anonymous, stealth rental car service (although plenty of crimes could benefit from it). The analogy is a taxi service that advertises itself as willing and able to crash through police barricades.
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      Actually, no. Money laundering is generally defined as obscuring the source and/or destination of funds whatever the reason. It is a false equivalence to say that because one wants to hide the source or destination of funds that one knowingly is doing so with an illegal activity being the motivating cause. There is no such thing as "standard bank privacy" when nearly anyone in that organisation can look up your data without explicit justification or judicial review. In an era where, for corporations at least, money is speech, it certainly is limited for us mere mortals who can't setup shell corporations to sacrifice themselves for our causes. Edit: I should be quite clear, I am neither for or against AML regulations. I, however, am for an equal playing field. I would like to see a world where the increasing quantity of money one has doesn't have an increasing effect on how many times one's vote counts at the expense of those who don't have as much. Privacy and the ability to act collectively to support unpopular opinions should not be a commodity that can be bought and sold in the form of a corporate veil.
    - atemerev 9y ago
      Like I said before, not everything that is illegal is wrong. In Germany, homeschooling is illegal. In Russia, telling teenagers that some people are gay and that's OK is illegal. The US law is a hodgepodge of contradicting legal statements which are different in different states, and many things can be counted as legal or illegal based on your wealth, political connections, race, or just luck. Law is not a bright shiny source of truth from outer heaven, it is a sketchy framework of hacks and patches written in haste to aid people in resolving their conflicts.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  That might be totally true, but money laundering as a crime itself is just a cover for prosecutors inability to find the real crimes. It's about as morally defensible as asset seizures.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    That seems pretty bogus. You're telling me that you think if I operate a front business and help human traffickers launder their money (thereby helping them to cover up their crime), but don't involve myself with human trafficking itself, I've done nothing wrong, and prosecuting me would be morally indefensible?
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Yes. The crime in question is the human trafficking. Pursue and prosecute that. If you go by the economic definitions of money, which generally include uniformity and fungibility, money laundering is really a whinge from law enforcement that police work is difficult, and can't they please go after someone who may be less dangerous and less guilty, but is much easier to catch? You can't reasonably expect people to investigate the full history of all money they receive as payments. Merchants have the right to presume that their customers are innocent in the absence of blatantly obvious evidence to the contrary. As they say, gold has no smell. A coin that was obtained by murdering its former owner cannot carry residual guilt from the crime. Once it is used to buy a sack of oranges at market price, it is indistinguishable from a coin that was mined and refined by devout monks, repeatedly donated to charity, sequentially blessed by all the religious figures at that bar where all the jokes happen when they walk into it, and then spent on a sack of grapefruits. If you buy a house with 50% legit income, and 50% black market contraband profits, you don't seize half the house and claw the other half back from the previous owner. The proceeds of criminal activity attach to the criminal, not to the property. The money has no soul or conscience. It is innocent whenever the person who carries it is. And money laundering is not a crime, in my opinion, because in order for it to be a crime, certain inaccurate assumptions about money have to be true--namely that money is not uniform and fungible. It artificially makes money from a marijuana dispensary business different from money from a pharmacy. Cash should be cash, agnostic of the sins of its bearer.
conanbatt 9y ago
Money laundering is almost certainly tax evasion. On that regard, it is effectively a crime.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Can you explain this? If someone has a bundle of cash from illegally selling drugs, then they give it to their store front to "launder" as retail income, aren't they now paying tax they wouldn't otherwise pay?
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    When you earn your income, you pay a tax, and when you spend it, the business pays a tax. In money laundering, only the retail business pays the tax, so effectively its not the equivalent taxation.
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      Why would there be personal income tax on the criminal activity? Guy sells drugs but obviously can't record the profits as DrugCo's profits, so he records it as RetailCo's income. If DrugCo was legal, the taxes would be on that company instead. His personal income tax is unchanged: whatever he takes out of RetailCo is still taxed, and RetailCo pays whatever corp taxes are applicable. The only difference is in the details of the corporate taxation. Selling meth legally might be taxed differently than laundromat services. So an ethical money launderer should look to use front businesses that have an equivalent tax rate and not take advantage of any special tax discounts that wouldn't apply to the original source.

reitanqild 9y ago

And of course there's no victims in money laundering. It's a victimless crime that has the sole purpose of helping prosecutors when they aren't able to find a real crime. While the laundry operation is victimless it often directly assists crimes that have very real crimes: Trafficking Drug abusers [0] Illegal weapons trade [1] [0]: Esp. as since it is currently illegal they suffer a lot as getting their drugs means dealing with people you normally don't want to deal with and doing stuff you rather wouldn't do. [1]: no, I'm still pro guns. I just don't want them sold illegally.

atemerev 9y ago
Right. And cars manufacturers assist kidnappers and bank robbers escapes. And cell phones can be used as remote detonators. And end-to-end cryptography... no, this is an abomination, you shouldn't even think of it unless you willingly submit your private keys to the appropriate government agency for safe escrow to aid lawful investigations! (I would have put /s here, but all these lines will be used at face value soon enough).
- reitanqild 9y ago
  And cars manufacturers assist kidnappers and bank robbers escapes. No. Because there never is any planning between the manufacturer and the bank robbers. Remember: we are talking about money laundering operations here, not accidentally receiving stolen goods without knowing. Can these use be abused? Yes. Very much. Should they still exist? Yes.
  - atemerev 9y ago
    Yes. Two questions are: did the BTC-e founder knew that he is helping to legalize proceeds for MtGox hack? Or some general hack? Or just he didn't make due diligence on the source of money and just agreed to help for a fee? And second — what authority the US government has in running the trial? Why the case is not tried in Japanese or Russian or Cyprus courts?
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      I'm of no opinion here.
- piaste 9y ago
  Money laundering is knowingly assisting criminal activities. You're actively hiding where the money comes from, exactly because you know it comes from illegal sources. (If the source were legal but embarrassing, all you'd need is standard bank privacy, not active laundering.) The car-related analogy isn't a car manufacturer. It isn't even an anonymous, stealth rental car service (although plenty of crimes could benefit from it). The analogy is a taxi service that advertises itself as willing and able to crash through police barricades.
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    Actually, no. Money laundering is generally defined as obscuring the source and/or destination of funds whatever the reason. It is a false equivalence to say that because one wants to hide the source or destination of funds that one knowingly is doing so with an illegal activity being the motivating cause. There is no such thing as "standard bank privacy" when nearly anyone in that organisation can look up your data without explicit justification or judicial review. In an era where, for corporations at least, money is speech, it certainly is limited for us mere mortals who can't setup shell corporations to sacrifice themselves for our causes. Edit: I should be quite clear, I am neither for or against AML regulations. I, however, am for an equal playing field. I would like to see a world where the increasing quantity of money one has doesn't have an increasing effect on how many times one's vote counts at the expense of those who don't have as much. Privacy and the ability to act collectively to support unpopular opinions should not be a commodity that can be bought and sold in the form of a corporate veil.
  - atemerev 9y ago
    Like I said before, not everything that is illegal is wrong. In Germany, homeschooling is illegal. In Russia, telling teenagers that some people are gay and that's OK is illegal. The US law is a hodgepodge of contradicting legal statements which are different in different states, and many things can be counted as legal or illegal based on your wealth, political connections, race, or just luck. Law is not a bright shiny source of truth from outer heaven, it is a sketchy framework of hacks and patches written in haste to aid people in resolving their conflicts.
MichaelGG 9y ago
That might be totally true, but money laundering as a crime itself is just a cover for prosecutors inability to find the real crimes. It's about as morally defensible as asset seizures.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  That seems pretty bogus. You're telling me that you think if I operate a front business and help human traffickers launder their money (thereby helping them to cover up their crime), but don't involve myself with human trafficking itself, I've done nothing wrong, and prosecuting me would be morally indefensible?
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Yes. The crime in question is the human trafficking. Pursue and prosecute that. If you go by the economic definitions of money, which generally include uniformity and fungibility, money laundering is really a whinge from law enforcement that police work is difficult, and can't they please go after someone who may be less dangerous and less guilty, but is much easier to catch? You can't reasonably expect people to investigate the full history of all money they receive as payments. Merchants have the right to presume that their customers are innocent in the absence of blatantly obvious evidence to the contrary. As they say, gold has no smell. A coin that was obtained by murdering its former owner cannot carry residual guilt from the crime. Once it is used to buy a sack of oranges at market price, it is indistinguishable from a coin that was mined and refined by devout monks, repeatedly donated to charity, sequentially blessed by all the religious figures at that bar where all the jokes happen when they walk into it, and then spent on a sack of grapefruits. If you buy a house with 50% legit income, and 50% black market contraband profits, you don't seize half the house and claw the other half back from the previous owner. The proceeds of criminal activity attach to the criminal, not to the property. The money has no soul or conscience. It is innocent whenever the person who carries it is. And money laundering is not a crime, in my opinion, because in order for it to be a crime, certain inaccurate assumptions about money have to be true--namely that money is not uniform and fungible. It artificially makes money from a marijuana dispensary business different from money from a pharmacy. Cash should be cash, agnostic of the sins of its bearer.

conanbatt 9y ago

Money laundering is almost certainly tax evasion. On that regard, it is effectively a crime.

MichaelGG 9y ago
Can you explain this? If someone has a bundle of cash from illegally selling drugs, then they give it to their store front to "launder" as retail income, aren't they now paying tax they wouldn't otherwise pay?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  When you earn your income, you pay a tax, and when you spend it, the business pays a tax. In money laundering, only the retail business pays the tax, so effectively its not the equivalent taxation.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Why would there be personal income tax on the criminal activity? Guy sells drugs but obviously can't record the profits as DrugCo's profits, so he records it as RetailCo's income. If DrugCo was legal, the taxes would be on that company instead. His personal income tax is unchanged: whatever he takes out of RetailCo is still taxed, and RetailCo pays whatever corp taxes are applicable. The only difference is in the details of the corporate taxation. Selling meth legally might be taxed differently than laundromat services. So an ethical money launderer should look to use front businesses that have an equivalent tax rate and not take advantage of any special tax discounts that wouldn't apply to the original source.