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He already had the BTC in a cold wallet, meaninig that the whole process was completed (deposit USD into coinbase, exchange to BTC, withdraw it) My point is, c

He already had the BTC in a cold wallet, meaninig that the whole process was completed (deposit USD into coinbase, exchange to BTC, withdraw it) My point is, coinbase still allowed 154millions USD to be washed on it's exchange. By a random guy who clearly didnt even bother cover his back, imagine what actual organized crime is doing with offshores exchanges.

bogota 5y ago
Im trying to imagine it can you help me? Just seems like a classic slippery slope fallacy to me though.
fastball 5y ago
Clearly the funds weren't "washed", because they traced them... KYC isn't meant to prevent money from moving at all, it's meant to enable tracing of the money.
- firekvz 5y ago
  They traced him, because, it seems that he wasn't the smartest criminal in the planet. Just the fact that he was in tokyo (japan), instead of a non US aligned country, such as Russia or China, that he had his private keys easy accesible and that he stayed in BTC instead of going for another crypto more anon friendly, says a lot of the stupid nature of this "criminal" But once again, my whole point is, coinbase allowed a random person to deposit 154 millions USD and withdraw 3.8k btc with absolutely no problems? and in a quickly way, according to the original article I think its safe to assume that the banks said, okay the money went to coinbase, and coinbase just said yeah about that, he used the money to buy BTC and withdrew it to this wallet and thats about it the guy was located cause he didnt even try to hide himself, the rest is history. my point remains, if this, that was a such dumb crime, managed to convert the stolen funds into BTC using coinbase with absolutely no problems, then its easy to assume that real and strong money going to biggest offshores exchanges is from illicit sources.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Why are you holding Coinbase responsible but not the bank?
    - firekvz 5y ago
      Im not holding anyone responsible, im just mentioning that, it's obvious that a lot of the money flowing into crypto its not legal, this sets a clear example of how easy stolen money was washed using coinbase without much problems, its a clear indicator for the big picture, when exchanges like binance has 10x more volume, where do u think that money is really comming from? and that is actually happening on those exchanges with money flowing?
      - fastball 5y ago
        You're making a point about how it was so easy for the perp to get money into crypto while seemingly ignoring the fact that it was equally easy for him to move the money around via the traditional banking system.
        tcmart14 5y ago
        Must has been a really shitty bank. And they do exist for sure. Lot of people were at fault here. I know if it were my bank, I would be getting a call from them asking them if something is up. "Hey, just wanted to make sure, you are actually authorizing all this cash right?"
      - keymone 5y ago
        Did it ever hit you that all the illegal money flowing into crypto IS ILLEGAL PRIOR TO BEING IN CRYPTO?
        newjersey 5y ago
        Exactly. This is probably the best outcome for the owner of the money. I remember reading a story about how the government recovered supposedly millions of dollars worth of diamonds but was unable to unload those diamonds for anywhere the amount the criminal bought it for. I would have thought the government would force the people who sold the diamonds to take it back and reimburse the government in full. I don't get why that was not an option.
fomine3 5y ago
Yeah. It is impressing that a single person could buy $150M crypto.
epivosism 5y ago
You can't use "someone being caught" as evidence of "how easy it is not to get caught" - because you would also treat NOT getting caught to prove the same thing. This would mean that no matter what evidence you observe you would reach the same conclusion... which means the article made no difference to you. To go into more detail, claims like "he was only barely caught" shadow the possibilities of him being caught later, which never had a chance to be realized. i.e. it may appear that he was caught randomly but we owe it to truth to at least dig into what would have happened if that had failed - and that likely requires a domain expert to know the actual security measures in place.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  In my highly regulated and audited work, there are cases where people on money laundering lists initiate a transaction, and we can’t block it because it would tip them off that they have been detected, in theory some other department or organization is supposed to follow up
throwawaycities 5y ago
But why focus on the cryptocurrency portion of what happened when what happened first was all fiat based? A single person controlled the transfer instructions via email for a $150M insurance transfer. By falsifying the email instructions for the fiat transfer $150M was sent directly to his personal account (no red flags there). Then he was able to transfer $150M from his personal account to coinbase (no red flags there). Why is your focus on the coinbase conversion from fiat to Bitcoin?
- GauntletWizard 5y ago
  Because the fiat was easily recoverable in the traditional financial system. If they had not caught the guy, or he had already moved the BTC to a mafia-run account, not one he still controlled, it could be lost forever - The great 'benefit' of BTC is that the government has a hard time seizing it.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Yet they seem to have had no trouble doing so in this case?
  - throwawaycities 5y ago
    You do realize financial fraud within the traditional financial system preexisted cryptocurrency right?
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Yes, and there is tons of hard work being put into it all the time to stop it. This does not happen in crypto.
      - throwawaycities 5y ago
        Hard work to stop it? There was a global insurance company that sent an international wire, at least two banks with multiple transactions, and coinbase which is a KYC compliant publicly traded company. Despite ample opportunity, no one stopped this, rather they all facilitated it. This all originated from an email containing fraudulent wire instructions, trying to pin all this on cryptocurrency is less sound than blaming email. Despite all the deflection, law enforcement was able to recover the Bitcoin. Contrary to your point law enforcement and regulators alike have successfully brought legal actions (civil) and prosecutions (criminal) in the blockchain space just as they have against traditional institutions. The insurance company, banks, and coinbase are all to happy cryptocurrency was involved at some point so they can do some magic hand waving, and blame cryptocurrency. I would ask why bother, but obviously it’s a successful PR campaign to excuse their own ineptitude.
Consultant32452 5y ago
I worked at a company headquarters and some guy in accounting just switched the banking info for one of the vendors to his own bank info. He stole money for literally years. I don't know how it worked for so long because somehow the vendor must've been getting paid, maybe he was also falsifying invoices or something. I dunno. Anyways, no crypto and this was the corporate headquarters for a company most Americans would know.
thealig 5y ago
Do note that the Coinbase business account was created by him fraudulently in the name of the subsidiary of the company (Sony Life) , but actually he had no authorization to do so. [0] [0] -https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_ishii_bc_forfeiture#document/p11 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_i...
paulpauper 5y ago
I don't think ppl appreciate just how big crypto is. $150 million is tiny compared to how big crypto is ($2.3 trillion). We're taking $60 billion of BTC being traded daily. And same for tether and eth. It's just insane. So it's possible that $150 million could slip through. Crypto is huge. Way bigger than online gambling, sports betting, etc.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Crypto "market caps" are complete 100% fiction. They do not represent any kind of real value that exists. They mean nothing.
  - wruza 5y ago
    The company I work at trades crypto deposited/withdrawn from real USD and EUR bank accounts as it would be with any stock exchange broker account, all legal. You may now reduce your fiction percentage to 99.9…9% at least, unless I’m lying for some conspiracy reason.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      It's not just that prices are complete nonsense and massively manipulated. It's also that multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real.
      - wruza 5y ago
        multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything It is also true for any regular stock. “Market cap” is just an indicator value of a stock at a given time, not the value, and no one expects all of it to be sold at that sum, because of market dynamics. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real regardless of the asset class. The only difference between crypto and some stock market traded company shares is that the latter has usually a known non-zero value at the assets level, everything else is just a thin air of trust and expectations. You may see cryptohead-ance as crypto’s base assets.
kortilla 5y ago
“Look at this guy who got caught! Imagine how easy it is to not get caught!” That’s not really a compelling story.

bogota 5y ago

Im trying to imagine it can you help me? Just seems like a classic slippery slope fallacy to me though.

fastball 5y ago

Clearly the funds weren't "washed", because they traced them... KYC isn't meant to prevent money from moving at all, it's meant to enable tracing of the money.

firekvz 5y ago
They traced him, because, it seems that he wasn't the smartest criminal in the planet. Just the fact that he was in tokyo (japan), instead of a non US aligned country, such as Russia or China, that he had his private keys easy accesible and that he stayed in BTC instead of going for another crypto more anon friendly, says a lot of the stupid nature of this "criminal" But once again, my whole point is, coinbase allowed a random person to deposit 154 millions USD and withdraw 3.8k btc with absolutely no problems? and in a quickly way, according to the original article I think its safe to assume that the banks said, okay the money went to coinbase, and coinbase just said yeah about that, he used the money to buy BTC and withdrew it to this wallet and thats about it the guy was located cause he didnt even try to hide himself, the rest is history. my point remains, if this, that was a such dumb crime, managed to convert the stolen funds into BTC using coinbase with absolutely no problems, then its easy to assume that real and strong money going to biggest offshores exchanges is from illicit sources.
- fastball 5y ago
  Why are you holding Coinbase responsible but not the bank?
  - firekvz 5y ago
    Im not holding anyone responsible, im just mentioning that, it's obvious that a lot of the money flowing into crypto its not legal, this sets a clear example of how easy stolen money was washed using coinbase without much problems, its a clear indicator for the big picture, when exchanges like binance has 10x more volume, where do u think that money is really comming from? and that is actually happening on those exchanges with money flowing?
    - fastball 5y ago
      You're making a point about how it was so easy for the perp to get money into crypto while seemingly ignoring the fact that it was equally easy for him to move the money around via the traditional banking system.
      - tcmart14 5y ago
        Must has been a really shitty bank. And they do exist for sure. Lot of people were at fault here. I know if it were my bank, I would be getting a call from them asking them if something is up. "Hey, just wanted to make sure, you are actually authorizing all this cash right?"
    - keymone 5y ago
      Did it ever hit you that all the illegal money flowing into crypto IS ILLEGAL PRIOR TO BEING IN CRYPTO?
      - newjersey 5y ago
        Exactly. This is probably the best outcome for the owner of the money. I remember reading a story about how the government recovered supposedly millions of dollars worth of diamonds but was unable to unload those diamonds for anywhere the amount the criminal bought it for. I would have thought the government would force the people who sold the diamonds to take it back and reimburse the government in full. I don't get why that was not an option.

fomine3 5y ago

Yeah. It is impressing that a single person could buy $150M crypto.

epivosism 5y ago

You can't use "someone being caught" as evidence of "how easy it is not to get caught" - because you would also treat NOT getting caught to prove the same thing. This would mean that no matter what evidence you observe you would reach the same conclusion... which means the article made no difference to you. To go into more detail, claims like "he was only barely caught" shadow the possibilities of him being caught later, which never had a chance to be realized. i.e. it may appear that he was caught randomly but we owe it to truth to at least dig into what would have happened if that had failed - and that likely requires a domain expert to know the actual security measures in place.

monkeycantype 5y ago
In my highly regulated and audited work, there are cases where people on money laundering lists initiate a transaction, and we can’t block it because it would tip them off that they have been detected, in theory some other department or organization is supposed to follow up

throwawaycities 5y ago

But why focus on the cryptocurrency portion of what happened when what happened first was all fiat based? A single person controlled the transfer instructions via email for a $150M insurance transfer. By falsifying the email instructions for the fiat transfer $150M was sent directly to his personal account (no red flags there). Then he was able to transfer $150M from his personal account to coinbase (no red flags there). Why is your focus on the coinbase conversion from fiat to Bitcoin?

GauntletWizard 5y ago
Because the fiat was easily recoverable in the traditional financial system. If they had not caught the guy, or he had already moved the BTC to a mafia-run account, not one he still controlled, it could be lost forever - The great 'benefit' of BTC is that the government has a hard time seizing it.
- lazide 5y ago
  Yet they seem to have had no trouble doing so in this case?
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  You do realize financial fraud within the traditional financial system preexisted cryptocurrency right?
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Yes, and there is tons of hard work being put into it all the time to stop it. This does not happen in crypto.
    - throwawaycities 5y ago
      Hard work to stop it? There was a global insurance company that sent an international wire, at least two banks with multiple transactions, and coinbase which is a KYC compliant publicly traded company. Despite ample opportunity, no one stopped this, rather they all facilitated it. This all originated from an email containing fraudulent wire instructions, trying to pin all this on cryptocurrency is less sound than blaming email. Despite all the deflection, law enforcement was able to recover the Bitcoin. Contrary to your point law enforcement and regulators alike have successfully brought legal actions (civil) and prosecutions (criminal) in the blockchain space just as they have against traditional institutions. The insurance company, banks, and coinbase are all to happy cryptocurrency was involved at some point so they can do some magic hand waving, and blame cryptocurrency. I would ask why bother, but obviously it’s a successful PR campaign to excuse their own ineptitude.

Consultant32452 5y ago

I worked at a company headquarters and some guy in accounting just switched the banking info for one of the vendors to his own bank info. He stole money for literally years. I don't know how it worked for so long because somehow the vendor must've been getting paid, maybe he was also falsifying invoices or something. I dunno. Anyways, no crypto and this was the corporate headquarters for a company most Americans would know.

thealig 5y ago

Do note that the Coinbase business account was created by him fraudulently in the name of the subsidiary of the company (Sony Life) , but actually he had no authorization to do so. [0] [0] -https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_ishii_bc_forfeiture#document/p11 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_i...

paulpauper 5y ago

I don't think ppl appreciate just how big crypto is. $150 million is tiny compared to how big crypto is ($2.3 trillion). We're taking $60 billion of BTC being traded daily. And same for tether and eth. It's just insane. So it's possible that $150 million could slip through. Crypto is huge. Way bigger than online gambling, sports betting, etc.

user-the-name 5y ago
Crypto "market caps" are complete 100% fiction. They do not represent any kind of real value that exists. They mean nothing.
- wruza 5y ago
  The company I work at trades crypto deposited/withdrawn from real USD and EUR bank accounts as it would be with any stock exchange broker account, all legal. You may now reduce your fiction percentage to 99.9…9% at least, unless I’m lying for some conspiracy reason.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    It's not just that prices are complete nonsense and massively manipulated. It's also that multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real.
    - wruza 5y ago
      multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything It is also true for any regular stock. “Market cap” is just an indicator value of a stock at a given time, not the value, and no one expects all of it to be sold at that sum, because of market dynamics. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real regardless of the asset class. The only difference between crypto and some stock market traded company shares is that the latter has usually a known non-zero value at the assets level, everything else is just a thin air of trust and expectations. You may see cryptohead-ance as crypto’s base assets.

kortilla 5y ago

“Look at this guy who got caught! Imagine how easy it is to not get caught!” That’s not really a compelling story.