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This story is framed oddly. Imagine if you blamed, say, cash, for being used by North Korea. Also compare this treatment to the employees at Wells Fargo/Wachovi

This story is framed oddly. Imagine if you blamed, say, cash, for being used by North Korea. Also compare this treatment to the employees at Wells Fargo/Wachovia who laundered billions for Mexican drug cartels, >The settlement reached between Wachovia and U.S. authorities, known as a "deferred prosecution," raises questions. It's a probationary agreement, effectively allowing the bank to evade prosecution if it abides by the law for a year. While the fine imposed was substantial, it amounted to less than 2% of Wachovia's 2009 profit.

ceejayoz 2y ago
> Imagine if you blamed, say, cash, for being used by North Korea. This is odd framing. If you launder cash for the North Koreans, you will similarly find the weight of various criminal justice systems descending upon you. Ethereum is widely in legal usage. I'm all for harsher penalties for Wells Fargo.
itsoktocry 2y ago
People's default assumption seems to be that the prosecutors are corrupt, or dumb, or both. Wasn't the Wells Fargo amount much smaller, in the millions? And someone is going to jail for that, too?
- superkuh 2y ago
  It's easy to be confused about Wells Fargo money laundering. There are just so many repeated cases of it every few years. To be specific, I said the Wachovia one, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico... and yes, billions. As for the prosecutors in general: they do a job. It's the DAs bringing indictments specifically that are corrupt as a rule.
brookst 2y ago
The quote from prosecutors in the article is actually really good: it is about human behavior, not the tools. Abstracting the question to whether tumblers or cash or guns or whatever should be 100% legal or 100% illegal is too reductive to be useful for anything but rhetoric. It’s when people take actions with intent and outcomes that the law gets interested. Those are what we should talk about. Cash has lots of legitimate uses and some uses which I’m fine saying are illegal. Ditto with guns, even speech. In this case the summaries at least sound like there was tons of evidence he was specifically designing and building features to make the service better for criminals, with the intent and outcome of facilitating criminal activity. Behaviors, as the prosecutor said.
- SamPatt 2y ago
  Was he making the software better for criminals because he wanted to help (and presumably benefit from) criminals, or was he just making the software more private for anyone, and that happened to help criminals too? I don't know the answer, but I imagine looking at the benefits of his actions would help inform. Did he have ties to criminal organizations, or receive payments from them?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” When you add a "don't mix my stuff with the known criminal accounts" toggle in the UI, it's hard to argue ignorance.
    - dpc_01234 2y ago
      I don't think you understand what it means. The on chain contract like that can't possibly know which funds are "illicit" or "marked as suspicious". Only users entering the contract can possibly have some logic on the client side to bail out if they notice the would be joining funds with some best effort list of "illicit" addresses, and there's really nothing forcing them to use it. I bet generally here both the public and judges do not understand the technical details.
      - PretzelPirate 2y ago
        A contract can reference a list of addresses that have been marked as suspicious as long as someone stores that list on chain. It doesn't need to be client side.
    - SamPatt 2y ago
      I'm not so sure. An idealist might build something to be totally agnostic, and only after adoption from criminals might then realize they need to do something about that, hence adding in a filter. Then that effort is seen as evidence against them? Lots of open source software activists are idealists. This is why I asked if there's evidence they were actually receiving illicit funds.
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
Wells Fargo employees who knowingly processed money for drug cartels went to prison too. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/wells-fargo-personal-banker-sentenced-money-laundering-and-bank-fraud https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/wells-fargo-personal-ba...
- dpc_01234 2y ago
  Got half of the time of that developer, while knowingly and directly laundering that money for a cartel? :D
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    Got half the time of that developer for laundering 1% as much money.
    - dpc_01234 2y ago
      Oh. I see it now. > More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn But they locked up one dude who did: > These 11 fictitious accounts alone were used by the criminal organization to wire transfer a total of $3.8 million to Mexico. Justice was served indeed.
      - lambdaxyzw 2y ago
        Well, it's not even 1% then, but 0.01%. 3.8 million vs 378400 millions.

ceejayoz 2y ago

> Imagine if you blamed, say, cash, for being used by North Korea. This is odd framing. If you launder cash for the North Koreans, you will similarly find the weight of various criminal justice systems descending upon you. Ethereum is widely in legal usage. I'm all for harsher penalties for Wells Fargo.

itsoktocry 2y ago

People's default assumption seems to be that the prosecutors are corrupt, or dumb, or both. Wasn't the Wells Fargo amount much smaller, in the millions? And someone is going to jail for that, too?

superkuh 2y ago
It's easy to be confused about Wells Fargo money laundering. There are just so many repeated cases of it every few years. To be specific, I said the Wachovia one, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico... and yes, billions. As for the prosecutors in general: they do a job. It's the DAs bringing indictments specifically that are corrupt as a rule.

brookst 2y ago

The quote from prosecutors in the article is actually really good: it is about human behavior, not the tools. Abstracting the question to whether tumblers or cash or guns or whatever should be 100% legal or 100% illegal is too reductive to be useful for anything but rhetoric. It’s when people take actions with intent and outcomes that the law gets interested. Those are what we should talk about. Cash has lots of legitimate uses and some uses which I’m fine saying are illegal. Ditto with guns, even speech. In this case the summaries at least sound like there was tons of evidence he was specifically designing and building features to make the service better for criminals, with the intent and outcome of facilitating criminal activity. Behaviors, as the prosecutor said.

SamPatt 2y ago
Was he making the software better for criminals because he wanted to help (and presumably benefit from) criminals, or was he just making the software more private for anyone, and that happened to help criminals too? I don't know the answer, but I imagine looking at the benefits of his actions would help inform. Did he have ties to criminal organizations, or receive payments from them?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” When you add a "don't mix my stuff with the known criminal accounts" toggle in the UI, it's hard to argue ignorance.
  - dpc_01234 2y ago
    I don't think you understand what it means. The on chain contract like that can't possibly know which funds are "illicit" or "marked as suspicious". Only users entering the contract can possibly have some logic on the client side to bail out if they notice the would be joining funds with some best effort list of "illicit" addresses, and there's really nothing forcing them to use it. I bet generally here both the public and judges do not understand the technical details.
    - PretzelPirate 2y ago
      A contract can reference a list of addresses that have been marked as suspicious as long as someone stores that list on chain. It doesn't need to be client side.
  - SamPatt 2y ago
    I'm not so sure. An idealist might build something to be totally agnostic, and only after adoption from criminals might then realize they need to do something about that, hence adding in a filter. Then that effort is seen as evidence against them? Lots of open source software activists are idealists. This is why I asked if there's evidence they were actually receiving illicit funds.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago

Wells Fargo employees who knowingly processed money for drug cartels went to prison too. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/wells-fargo-personal-banker-sentenced-money-laundering-and-bank-fraud https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/wells-fargo-personal-ba...

dpc_01234 2y ago
Got half of the time of that developer, while knowingly and directly laundering that money for a cartel? :D
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Got half the time of that developer for laundering 1% as much money.
  - dpc_01234 2y ago
    Oh. I see it now. > More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn But they locked up one dude who did: > These 11 fictitious accounts alone were used by the criminal organization to wire transfer a total of $3.8 million to Mexico. Justice was served indeed.
    - lambdaxyzw 2y ago
      Well, it's not even 1% then, but 0.01%. 3.8 million vs 378400 millions.