3 ms·

He did not conceal his tracks. He would pop up on IRS radar just for moving a lot of bitcoin. I owned some bitcoin and was a bit worried because many exchanges

by avgDev 7y ago

He did not conceal his tracks. He would pop up on IRS radar just for moving a lot of bitcoin. I owned some bitcoin and was a bit worried because many exchanges were forced by the government to release information of people, coinbase for example. Even, if he did not use one of those exchanges, depositing large amounts of cash and buying 1 mil lakefront property will raise some eyebrows. On his tax returns he said bitcoins were a gift from a relative....unless his relative is ultra rich, no uncle is just going to gift you 3 million bucks. Plus, I am pretty sure you need to present documentation, the IRS will not just take your word for it. Honestly, any deposit over I think 10k is reported to the IRS by the banks, and IRS knows how much this guy is making, what he owns, etc. Crypto currencies are not really as anonymous as supporters would like you to believe, and IRS will crush this guy.

flatiron 7y ago
i wonder if he never switched it to fiat if he would have gotten caught on the IRS/Fed side. If he kept it Bitcoin or if he had some Bitcoin to Cash side hustle that he could keep under wraps from the IRS he might have gotten away with it.
- avgDev 7y ago
  He should have opened a "cash" type of business and inflated number of customers and basically laundered money. He would still probably get caught by Microsoft though eventually.
  - flatiron 7y ago
    still gotta have someone buy that bitcoin from you. dude shoulda done whatever the dark net drug dealers do (and i have no clue what they do but the obviously need to eat so some of that bitcoin turns into cash)
andrewla 7y ago
The IRS really doesn't care where the money came from if it is reported. The money that he received was reported on his tax returns, so the IRS would not look further at this, as long as the numbers matched up. In this case it appears that the IRS was brought in to it to correlate the individual's finances with the expected windfall, rather than instigating the investigation. That is, the investigators (in MS and law enforcement) knew who did it, and they were gathering further evidence.
- avgDev 7y ago
  You are correct the IRS doesn't but the US government does. This would fall under suspicious activity. "Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), financial institutions are required to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering, such as: Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion)"
mrandish 7y ago
> He did not conceal his tracks. True but I'm not sure it's feasible to conceal a theft of $10M from a large public corporation for very long if you don't work directly in finance or have IT access to financial records. Ultimately, double-entry accounting is going to show an imbalance somewhere as that $10M in gift cards is redeemed into actual cash at retail. Once the finance dept starts investigating why the books don't balance, it's only a matter of time until they narrow it down to approximately the right neighborhood. He was stupid not to realize they would eventually start looking for where the missing money went. The only way he might have gotten away with it was to cash it quickly and very carefully disappear under another identity somewhere outside the U.S. forever.

by avgDev 7y ago

flatiron 7y ago

i wonder if he never switched it to fiat if he would have gotten caught on the IRS/Fed side. If he kept it Bitcoin or if he had some Bitcoin to Cash side hustle that he could keep under wraps from the IRS he might have gotten away with it.

avgDev 7y ago
He should have opened a "cash" type of business and inflated number of customers and basically laundered money. He would still probably get caught by Microsoft though eventually.
- flatiron 7y ago
  still gotta have someone buy that bitcoin from you. dude shoulda done whatever the dark net drug dealers do (and i have no clue what they do but the obviously need to eat so some of that bitcoin turns into cash)

andrewla 7y ago

The IRS really doesn't care where the money came from if it is reported. The money that he received was reported on his tax returns, so the IRS would not look further at this, as long as the numbers matched up. In this case it appears that the IRS was brought in to it to correlate the individual's finances with the expected windfall, rather than instigating the investigation. That is, the investigators (in MS and law enforcement) knew who did it, and they were gathering further evidence.

avgDev 7y ago
You are correct the IRS doesn't but the US government does. This would fall under suspicious activity. "Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), financial institutions are required to assist U.S. government agencies in detecting and preventing money laundering, such as: Keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, File reports of cash transactions exceeding $10,000 (daily aggregate amount), and Report suspicious activity that might signal criminal activity (e.g., money laundering, tax evasion)"

mrandish 7y ago

> He did not conceal his tracks. True but I'm not sure it's feasible to conceal a theft of $10M from a large public corporation for very long if you don't work directly in finance or have IT access to financial records. Ultimately, double-entry accounting is going to show an imbalance somewhere as that $10M in gift cards is redeemed into actual cash at retail. Once the finance dept starts investigating why the books don't balance, it's only a matter of time until they narrow it down to approximately the right neighborhood. He was stupid not to realize they would eventually start looking for where the missing money went. The only way he might have gotten away with it was to cash it quickly and very carefully disappear under another identity somewhere outside the U.S. forever.