6 ms·
The DOJ’s Crypto Dragnet Is Bigger Than You Think
- rini17 5y ago"...if you did something bad 10 years ago you can be caught and arrested for it today". There is no period of limitation? And what is "something bad"? For example someone 10 years ago, accepted bitcoin in exchange by paying fiat pizza delivery to an US citizen, is that classifiable as money laundering?
- rafale 5y agoYou are protected by the Statue of Not Worth It. Stay small. Fly under the radar. You are not gonna make them famous or advance their career.
- piyh 5y agoUntil you write a critical article on someone important or sleep with a cybercrime guy's wife. There is no under the radar in big data, you are present and accounted for by default.
- Scoundreller 5y agoWith big data, everyone is the list. It still matters where you rank on it, but instead of just the top10 being fairly accurate, the top8b is fairly accurate.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jmnicolas 5y ago> You are protected by the Statue of Not Worth It. It can be automated and fined. This is why I'm totally against central band digital currencies, the potential for abuse is tremendous.
- dannyw 5y agoAlternatively, donate to political candidates, spend a few thousand dollars on events and fundraisers. Meet and greet, just to get your name out there. If you ever face criminal troubles, you might have someone in power who you can call. And they might make a call to the DA or field office, and they may have a change of mind.
- Clubber 5y agoDunno why this was downvoted. This is how things tend work when humans are involved.
- elliekelly 5y agoFor most financial crimes in the US the federal statute of limitations is 10 years. There’s also a “knowledge” element to the crime of money laundering. So let’s say someone sold a pizza for bitcoin a decade ago and it just so happens that bitcoin was obtained through unlawful conduct. Now the pizza seller might have technically, arguably, “laundered” the funds but as long as the pizza seller didn’t know the bitcoin was from criminal activity the pizza seller didn’t commit the crime of money laundering. They lacked the requisite criminal intent. This knowledge element is why the FBI’s email to Tornado is critical to the case. The agent specifically told Tornado the funds were obtained through illegal means so the DOJ can demonstrate Tornado had actual knowledge of the purpose of the transaction: structuring rather than privacy. (In theory at least. According to the post the email was never acknowledged or responded to.)
- jl2718 5y agoDoes Tornado.cash even have the ability to block transactions?
- elliekelly 5y agoI have no idea but from a legal perspective I don’t think it’s relevant to the question of whether or not they’ve committed the crime of money laundering. Although I’m not sure anyone has tried the “my algorithm is beyond of my control” defense yet?
- dannyw 5y agoThere exists code that functionally cannot be deactivated, disabled, or removed on the blockchain (Uniswap is a good exmaple, no admin keys). Let's say the SEC prosecutes Uniswap Labs for running a securities exchange. What they cannot do, and what no one can do, is shut down the underlying code behind Uniswap.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 5y ago
- davidgerard 5y agoThere is a statute of limitations. But in the general case: if you're going to do crimes, it's probably not so smart to do them on a permanent immutable public ledger of all transactions.
- jmnicolas 5y agoThe "crime" might be you made a modest profit on some crypto and "forgot" to report it to the IRS.
- dboreham 5y agoThat's a non-air-quotes crime. But the statute of limitations is 10 years.
- quartz 5y agoFor a modest unreported profit, assuming you converted it back to USD at an exchange that reports to the IRS, you'll probably get a CP2000 in the mail many years later with your recalculated back taxes (probably assuming a $0 cost basis that you'll have to provide records to dispute) + interest.
- davidgerard 5y agoyes, that is indeed a crime, and not a "crime".
- ashtonkem 5y agoStatue of limitations might apply.
- tromp 5y agoSeinfeld covered that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq8gfaFqFpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq8gfaFqFpI
- ac29 5y agoThere is no statute of limitation on civil tax fraud in the US. There is a limitation on criminal tax fraud, but for example, filing a false return to evade taxes (such as by not reporting cryptocurrency related capital gains) is a civil matter and the IRS is unrestricted in being able to attempt to collect the correct amount of tax at any point in time. edit: see https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6501 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6501 for the exceptions.
- encryptluks2 5y agoNote often statute of limitations often does not begin until discovery or "when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action.", and if they can't charge you criminally then that discovery rule may apply to civil or state law.
- joelbondurant 5y agoTerrorist thug society thinks everything belongs to them, fucking communist parasites as a culture.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoBitcoin traceability is old news. Nothing written on this article applies to Monero.
- blantonl 5y agoProblem is you might show up on the radar when you exchange Bitcoin or Fiat for Monero.
- chelmzy 5y agoIt is funny how slow and steady Monero adoption as been. It gets very little coverage on most platforms.
- bananapub 5y agobecause almost all of the cryptocurrency world is there for the ponzi scheme grift side of things, not because they want a functional payments system or anonymity.
- robot_no_419 5y agoMonero is one of the few currencies that focuses on the core project of a decentralized payments system. Go to their subreddit and you'll see they have a strong culture of discouraging price discussion and focusing on the technology.
- quantumBerry 5y agoI would argue that is more of a function of their low market cap (lack of retail "investors" who have no practical use for monero) which really only leaves developers, those who have a lot to lose (potential prison), those passionate for privacy (who's primary goal is not deflationary value) and the intellectually curious. If monero catches on the democratic balance tips towards retail investors and the discussion will focus on price. This also applies to reddit as a whole which has become lower and lower quality as mainstream culture has accepted its common use.
- legrande 5y agoMixers and coin tumblers could very well be honeypots. Want to easily see who has dirty money? Setup a mixer and find out!
- colinmhayes 5y agoTornado is open source. You can go check if its a honeypot if you're worried.
- lisper 5y agoPassword managers and E2E comms apps as well. If I were running a government surveillance program it's a total no-brainer that one of the things I would do is develop and publish world-class versions of both of these, though obviously concealing the fact that they were connected to government surveillance from the users, and probably most of the developers as well.
- capnorange 5y agoMaybe. Most popular mixers are now open source, wasabi, samourai, tornado.cash
- throw10002671 5y agoPrivacy is a thing that people legitimately desire as well. You don’t tell your neighbors about the valuables in your home. If I acquire BTC to hold long term, it’s in my interest from an opsec perspective to keep it secret, keep it safe.
- paulpauper 5y agoIsn't there a statute of limitations
- Sargos 5y agoThe United States' belief that its laws apply to everyone in the world is one of the most insidious ideas of our modern world. If one outcome of crypto is that the US loses this ability to police the world due to automated and unstoppable services becoming ubiquitous then history might look at this era as the turning point of a truly free global society.
- quantumBerry 5y agoThe idea that something is a crime if it is "accessible from the US" is truly a contortion of justice. If you take $5, walk across the mexican border, and then buy an antibiotic labeled for use in humnans -- is that a violation of US law because the Mexican pharmacy sold something that a US person could possibly access? What if that person used their Panamanian passport and not their US passport (VPN) to buy the antibiotics and the vendor could have never known they were a US national? Once currency leaves the US it is absurd to claim anything that happens with it is US jurisdiction. If that is the case all Americans who paid taxes should be put on war trials for money sent as foreign aid to despotic regimes.
- booleanbetrayal 5y agoIf value from an illicit transaction is ever diverted back into dollars, then it becomes the purview of US officials. I'm assuming that loop had been closed more than once with this mixer.
- quantumBerry 5y agoConsidering the the transactions happened overseas and we have no evidence they were prosecuted by overseas authorities, there's quite a bit of doubt whether the transaction were illicit in anything except the imaginary scenario that these transacions happened in the US (they did not). There doesn't appear to be prosecution in this case of exchanging for fiat back in the US so there's no prosecution for the on-soil "closing of the loop" you so mention. We all know many foreigners are buying real estate here in the US with dollars to evade capital controls in places like China, and this is actually happening on US soil, why isn't the DOJ focused on this? That's also quite the assertion that anything that happens with dollars is in the "purview of US officials." from a practical perspective you are correct but its conclusion is rather odious. If this were actually true and US dollars are the reason for jurisdiction then we both know launderers would all just use Euro or something else instead 100% of the time. Yet they don't, because pragmatically it makes little differenc as US would pursue their enemies all the same whether they transact in Euro or Dollar -- the dollar in this case is simply an excuse.
- DennisP 5y agoWorth noting that because all transactions are public, mixers aren't only for hiding from the government. They're also for hiding from the general public. Generally when you make a small purchase you don't tell the store what your bank balance is, but with crypto you do...unless you use a mixer (or a privacy coin that effectively has mixing built in). The other way is to use a centralized exchange as your "mixer," which is transparent to the government but imposes extra fees and adds counterparty risk. Corporate use of public blockchains will almost certainly require privacy technologies, to avoid giving information to competitors.
- w4llstr33t 5y agoI like crypto but the way I read this is that it's a good number of the reasons that the existing financial infrastructure is better (particularly once the US infrastructure updates to things like instant FedNow payments). I think defaulting to using a mixer would be inconvenient and it could get folks flagged for even using it at all. Also, what ever happened to not re-using addresses? I know it doesn't make it totally private, but I thought it helps some, since you'd still have to tie addresses to identities somewhere in the chain.
- DennisP 5y agoIf you just top off your spending wallet occasionally, it doesn't necessarily have to be more inconvenient than visiting an ATM, or paying your credit card bill if you don't have it drafted automatically. Seems to me that "getting folks flagged" for doing something innocent is a flaw in our government, more than a flaw in crypto. Not reusing addresses helps against casual inspection but with blockchain analysis these days, it's long obsolete as any sort of real privacy measure. It wouldn't be something corporations could use to protect competitive information. Also it's not useful at all on account-based chains like Ethereum.