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These indictments always read so weird, like they're trying to describe a nefarious criminal organization even though its behavior is just the same as any other

These indictments always read so weird, like they're trying to describe a nefarious criminal organization even though its behavior is just the same as any other enterprise. So they performed an unspecified financial transaction (allegedly illegal but not proven), which turned a profit, then paid the money out to a lot of people, who in turn paid some of it back to them later. Isn't that just... the economy? Walmart pays Alice for doing customer service, then Alice pays Walmart for breakfast cereal and soap. Even the ostensible crimes are like, they opened a bank account, deposited their own money in it and then withdrew it again without stealing anything or harming anyone, but you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name. Meanwhile lots of people have reasons to want to have an anonymous payments system and a lot of them are quite sympathetic, to the point that the only reason it's even illegal is to help lazy prosecutors who can't be bothered to prove the original crime. And then lots of sympathetic people break the law, because it's a bad law and they have little alternative. Then the whole thing is alleged to be a grand conspiracy. But wait, what percentage of the accounts were under someone else's name? Was it done for this purpose, or do they just do business with a lot of people and some of them are e.g. undocumented immigrants who couldn't use their own name? If there is some kind of theft happening here then why can't they prosecute the stealing instead of these moving money around allegations? The last line of the story is also just uncanny. One of these things is not like the others: > In the years since, it has grown into purportedly one of the US's most powerful conservative news organisations and a home to conspiracy theories, right-wing misinformation and sharp opposition to the Chinese Communist Party. Right?

pjc50 2y ago
> they opened a bank account, deposited their own money in it and then withdrew it again without stealing anything or harming anyone, but you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name Yes, you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name, that's what the crime is. > can't be bothered to prove the original crime The entire point of money laundering is to make it as difficult as possible to find the original crime or connect it. In an environment of anonymous payments, how do you prove X made a payment to Y? It's basically an extension of anti-fencing law, which is a pretty old principle. You're not allowed to help people fence stolen goods, and it's not a defence to look the other way. Money has to be treated specially because it's fungible and not a "good", but the principle is the same. If you were running a "cars bought for cash" scheme and refusing to check if any of the cars were stolen, I would assume you'd eventually be prosecuted for that.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Yes, you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name, that's what the crime is. But that's the objection. That's a stupid crime. The only reason anybody wants to do that is that they can't open one under nobody's name, even though there are legitimate and innocent reasons to want to do that. > The entire point of money laundering is to make it as difficult as possible to find the original crime or connect it. Money does that already by itself, because it's fungible. It's why AML laws don't work -- their effectiveness is basically zero. The harm they cause to innocent people far exceeds the benefits in rooting out undiscovered crimes -- not least because crimes that are causing harm to people are generally quite easily discovered, when the victims go to the police and report them. > In an environment of anonymous payments, how do you prove X made a payment to Y? You ignore the concept of wanting to do this at all and just prove that X committed the underlying crime. Because if there is no underlying crime then there is no need to prove whether or not there was a payment. The government has no legitimate interesting in proving what kind of literature or contraceptives you like to buy. > You're not allowed to help people fence stolen goods, and it's not a defence to look the other way. The way this is typically implemented is that the stolen goods are returned to the owner if you're caught with them. You don't actually get prosecuted unless they can prove you were in on it. After all, how is anybody supposed to know that? You go to jail because you bought something at a yard sale not knowing it was stolen? But that's exactly why it doesn't apply to money. Money is entirely fungible. If a criminal steals your car and sells it to a chop shop for $5000, and then the chop shop spends the money at Walmart and McDonalds, and then the money ends up in their bank account from which it goes to their suppliers and shareholders and other customers, just exactly who are you supposed to be entitled to recover from? And what is your retirement fund manager supposed to do, investigate each of Walmart's customers to see where they got their money? It would also be double counting. The stolen property is the car, not the money the thief sells it for. Unless the buyer didn't know the car was stolen, which is a separate crime with a different victim. And even then you're not trying to recover those specific bills or care about where they went after, you're just trying to recover any equivalent amount of assets from the criminal you can prove fraudulently sold a stolen car. Investigating crimes is for the police, not corporations. When you force corporations to do it, they do it capriciously and oppressively, because there are no constitutional safeguards.
fundad 2y ago
That’s an interesting opinion but there is a law and order benefit to a transparent financial system. Prosecuting launderers increases confidence in our economy.
- logicchains 2y ago
  Confidence in the financial system comes from knowing you won't suddenly lose access to your funds, and AML promotes the opposite of this. There are countless stories of small businesspeople suddenly being locked out of their bank accounts because their transaction patterns looked suspicious. On the global level, more and more countries are reducing the dependence on the US dollar to avoid sanctions or appropriation; without AML laws the US dollar would be in a much stronger position internationally as countries wouldn't have to worry about their funds being blocked or frozen.
  - smoothbenny 2y ago
    > There are countless stories of small businesspeople suddenly being locked out of their bank accounts because their transaction patterns looked suspicious This doesn’t sound like one of those stories. Remains to be seen once the prosecution and defense make their cases in court and a judge or jury rules on it.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > This doesn’t sound like one of those stories. Even if this turns out to be one of the stories where the defendants are actually wrongdoers, those laws are still resulting in "countless stories of small businesspeople suddenly being locked out of their bank accounts because their transaction patterns looked suspicious." Which isn't worth it, because the wrongdoers can still be prosecuted for their underlying crimes without having that. > source? You're asking for a source for a logical argument. It's fairly straightforward: If other countries (e.g. BRIC) have to worry that the US can shut off their money, they're going to build and support alternatives to US dollars to mitigate the threat, which weakens the dollar.
epc 2y ago
The entire point of an indictment is to lay out a series of probable crimes in order to arrest the individual or individuals, stop the crimes in progress, and set up a potential prosecution. It is not a prosecution. Further, as to prosecuting the thefts, for all we know that is the next step, or they have already done that and secured the cooperation of those conspirators as witnesses.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  An indictment implies that charges are being filed and therefore that the prosecution already thinks they can prove their case. If they can't even prove if there is an underlying crime, what are they supposed to be preventing? The entire problem is that they've set things up so they can charge people with something even if they can't prove the underlying crime, in order to exert undue leverage on them -- or even go all the way to conviction without ever proving the underlying crime, which is an injustice.

pjc50 2y ago

> they opened a bank account, deposited their own money in it and then withdrew it again without stealing anything or harming anyone, but you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name Yes, you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name, that's what the crime is. > can't be bothered to prove the original crime The entire point of money laundering is to make it as difficult as possible to find the original crime or connect it. In an environment of anonymous payments, how do you prove X made a payment to Y? It's basically an extension of anti-fencing law, which is a pretty old principle. You're not allowed to help people fence stolen goods, and it's not a defence to look the other way. Money has to be treated specially because it's fungible and not a "good", but the principle is the same. If you were running a "cars bought for cash" scheme and refusing to check if any of the cars were stolen, I would assume you'd eventually be prosecuted for that.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Yes, you're not allowed to do that under someone else's name, that's what the crime is. But that's the objection. That's a stupid crime. The only reason anybody wants to do that is that they can't open one under nobody's name, even though there are legitimate and innocent reasons to want to do that. > The entire point of money laundering is to make it as difficult as possible to find the original crime or connect it. Money does that already by itself, because it's fungible. It's why AML laws don't work -- their effectiveness is basically zero. The harm they cause to innocent people far exceeds the benefits in rooting out undiscovered crimes -- not least because crimes that are causing harm to people are generally quite easily discovered, when the victims go to the police and report them. > In an environment of anonymous payments, how do you prove X made a payment to Y? You ignore the concept of wanting to do this at all and just prove that X committed the underlying crime. Because if there is no underlying crime then there is no need to prove whether or not there was a payment. The government has no legitimate interesting in proving what kind of literature or contraceptives you like to buy. > You're not allowed to help people fence stolen goods, and it's not a defence to look the other way. The way this is typically implemented is that the stolen goods are returned to the owner if you're caught with them. You don't actually get prosecuted unless they can prove you were in on it. After all, how is anybody supposed to know that? You go to jail because you bought something at a yard sale not knowing it was stolen? But that's exactly why it doesn't apply to money. Money is entirely fungible. If a criminal steals your car and sells it to a chop shop for $5000, and then the chop shop spends the money at Walmart and McDonalds, and then the money ends up in their bank account from which it goes to their suppliers and shareholders and other customers, just exactly who are you supposed to be entitled to recover from? And what is your retirement fund manager supposed to do, investigate each of Walmart's customers to see where they got their money? It would also be double counting. The stolen property is the car, not the money the thief sells it for. Unless the buyer didn't know the car was stolen, which is a separate crime with a different victim. And even then you're not trying to recover those specific bills or care about where they went after, you're just trying to recover any equivalent amount of assets from the criminal you can prove fraudulently sold a stolen car. Investigating crimes is for the police, not corporations. When you force corporations to do it, they do it capriciously and oppressively, because there are no constitutional safeguards.

fundad 2y ago

That’s an interesting opinion but there is a law and order benefit to a transparent financial system. Prosecuting launderers increases confidence in our economy.

logicchains 2y ago
Confidence in the financial system comes from knowing you won't suddenly lose access to your funds, and AML promotes the opposite of this. There are countless stories of small businesspeople suddenly being locked out of their bank accounts because their transaction patterns looked suspicious. On the global level, more and more countries are reducing the dependence on the US dollar to avoid sanctions or appropriation; without AML laws the US dollar would be in a much stronger position internationally as countries wouldn't have to worry about their funds being blocked or frozen.
- smoothbenny 2y ago
  > There are countless stories of small businesspeople suddenly being locked out of their bank accounts because their transaction patterns looked suspicious This doesn’t sound like one of those stories. Remains to be seen once the prosecution and defense make their cases in court and a judge or jury rules on it.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > This doesn’t sound like one of those stories. Even if this turns out to be one of the stories where the defendants are actually wrongdoers, those laws are still resulting in "countless stories of small businesspeople suddenly being locked out of their bank accounts because their transaction patterns looked suspicious." Which isn't worth it, because the wrongdoers can still be prosecuted for their underlying crimes without having that. > source? You're asking for a source for a logical argument. It's fairly straightforward: If other countries (e.g. BRIC) have to worry that the US can shut off their money, they're going to build and support alternatives to US dollars to mitigate the threat, which weakens the dollar.

epc 2y ago

The entire point of an indictment is to lay out a series of probable crimes in order to arrest the individual or individuals, stop the crimes in progress, and set up a potential prosecution. It is not a prosecution. Further, as to prosecuting the thefts, for all we know that is the next step, or they have already done that and secured the cooperation of those conspirators as witnesses.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
An indictment implies that charges are being filed and therefore that the prosecution already thinks they can prove their case. If they can't even prove if there is an underlying crime, what are they supposed to be preventing? The entire problem is that they've set things up so they can charge people with something even if they can't prove the underlying crime, in order to exert undue leverage on them -- or even go all the way to conviction without ever proving the underlying crime, which is an injustice.