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So why not just send the payment to a Russian bank?

• tablespoon 5y ago
  > So why not just send the payment to a Russian bank? I don't know, I'm not a Russian in the ransomware business. But I speculate that doing it that way might be so blatant and inconvenient to the Russian government that it might get the policy that protects them changed. Also, I'd imagine any bank that accepts such payments would quickly get itself blacklisted. This stuff isn't actually binary, so it's not smart to take it to the limit.
• zaphar 5y ago
  Because Russian banks need to be capable of transacting with American banks and directly receiving money that is Ransom Payment related is a bad business decision.
  • nprz 5y ago
    So you're saying sending money to a bitcoin address would help obscure the identity of the receiver?
    • zaphar 5y ago
      No I'm saying a Russian bank probably doesn't look past the deposit. But if the deposit comes from America then an American bank will ask for it back when the US govt tells it to and then the bank will do so because it's good business. So I would imagine most ransomware gangs just keep the money in bitcoin and only pull out what they need to when they need to.