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> 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 anyb

> 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.

mcculley 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. It is far from true that the only reason people falsify identity in transactions is because KYC laws require identity. You should learn more about what criminals actually do.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Explain why someone would want to open a new empty bank account in someone else's name other than because they couldn't or don't want to open a new empty bank account in their own name. That's the crime we're talking about here. Not committing fraud so you can steal someone else's money, but only lying about your name because you don't want to give your name and the law prohibits you from not giving a name. The problem isn't even that it's illegal to open a bank account in someone else's name. The problem is that you're prohibited from anonymously opening a bank account.
  - mcculley 2y ago
    > Explain why someone would want to open a new empty bank account in someone else's name other than because they couldn't or don't want to open a new empty bank account in their own name. Putting income into someone else’s tax bracket is the obvious use case. You lack imagination or experience with the real world.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      That has nothing to do with this. To do that you would be long-term leaving the money in their account, requiring their cooperation because they would have the legal right to withdraw it. The same scheme works when you have the person whose name is on the account open it themselves. On top of that, that isn't even how withholding works. The tax isn't taken out by the bank, it's taken out by the employer, so to make your scheme work you'd have to be lying to the employer about who the employee is rather than the bank about whose account it is. And doing this kind of thing by any mechanism also doesn't need to be bank fraud because it's already tax fraud. Moreover, in practice how those schemes work doesn't require you to put some other person's name on the account, because they would put a corporate entity's name on the account, where the corporation is a legal entity type or is incorporated in a jurisdiction that has different tax treatment. It seems like you're just making up fake problems with giving people the ability to buy things digitally without having their privacy invaded. You need an example of something it would enable somebody to do that isn't already independently illegal. Otherwise you don't need this to be illegal because you can still prosecute them for that.

mcculley 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. It is far from true that the only reason people falsify identity in transactions is because KYC laws require identity. You should learn more about what criminals actually do.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Explain why someone would want to open a new empty bank account in someone else's name other than because they couldn't or don't want to open a new empty bank account in their own name. That's the crime we're talking about here. Not committing fraud so you can steal someone else's money, but only lying about your name because you don't want to give your name and the law prohibits you from not giving a name. The problem isn't even that it's illegal to open a bank account in someone else's name. The problem is that you're prohibited from anonymously opening a bank account.
- mcculley 2y ago
  > Explain why someone would want to open a new empty bank account in someone else's name other than because they couldn't or don't want to open a new empty bank account in their own name. Putting income into someone else’s tax bracket is the obvious use case. You lack imagination or experience with the real world.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    That has nothing to do with this. To do that you would be long-term leaving the money in their account, requiring their cooperation because they would have the legal right to withdraw it. The same scheme works when you have the person whose name is on the account open it themselves. On top of that, that isn't even how withholding works. The tax isn't taken out by the bank, it's taken out by the employer, so to make your scheme work you'd have to be lying to the employer about who the employee is rather than the bank about whose account it is. And doing this kind of thing by any mechanism also doesn't need to be bank fraud because it's already tax fraud. Moreover, in practice how those schemes work doesn't require you to put some other person's name on the account, because they would put a corporate entity's name on the account, where the corporation is a legal entity type or is incorporated in a jurisdiction that has different tax treatment. It seems like you're just making up fake problems with giving people the ability to buy things digitally without having their privacy invaded. You need an example of something it would enable somebody to do that isn't already independently illegal. Otherwise you don't need this to be illegal because you can still prosecute them for that.