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How is this not entrapment? Wouldn’t it be better for the FBI to investigate crypto scammers using their own coin than to create a coin for the purpose of scamm

How is this not entrapment? Wouldn’t it be better for the FBI to investigate crypto scammers using their own coin than to create a coin for the purpose of scamming? I feel like law enforcement always uses the option which produces easy prosecutions rather than the more difficult option that involves complex investigations that has more risk but more likely to produce long term good.

cyanydeez 2y ago
By not pumping and dumping?
daniel_iversen 2y ago
Came here to ask the same. I guess it's entrapment when law enforcement induces a person to commit a crime they otherwise wouldn't have.. so maybe it depends on how hard and well they marketed it? :) It's such a fine line - both legally maybe (IANAL) but certainly morally I feel.
JackYoustra 2y ago
law enforcement has limited resources, and must try to catch the most criminals and dissuade the most crime given said resources. It's especially bad in tax these days, there are tens of thousands of people with incomes over a million dollars that the US doesn't have the capacity to go after.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  That’s the IRS not the FBI.
- benmmurphy 2y ago
  It is a complex situation. The worst case scenario from these entrapment operations is the FBI incentives people into a committing a crime they would otherwise not have committed. The end result is more crime, but maybe it kind of nets out because FBI has 100% success and victims are made whole but then you have the sunk cost of this FBI work. The more optimal case is the FBI nabs people who would have otherwise committed another crime and this is a more efficient way of dealing with these people than investigating real crimes. My concern is the FBI doesn’t actually try and determine which is the best allocation of resources but just presses the button that makes the FBI look best. Investigating real crimes is a lot more difficult than investigating these ‘sting’ crimes so if investigating ‘sting’ crimes was less efficient then it might be incorrectly priotized.
deleted 2y ago
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ceejayoz 2y ago
It’s only entrapment if you push someone into doing something they wouldn’t normally do. If the FBI threatens your family to get you to commit a crime, that’s entrapment. If you pull up to a sex worker and proposition them, but it turns out to be a cop, that’s not entrapment. Because you were looking to commit the crime.
- soco 2y ago
  People: coins are great because everybody can create them. FBI: creates coins. People: not like that
jsheard 2y ago
IANAL but my understanding is it's only entrapment if they encouraged the other parties to commit crimes they may not have otherwise, if those other parties approached FBIcoin with a proposal to do crimes entirely of their own accord then it's a kosher sting operation.
potato3732842 2y ago
>How is this not entrapment? Look at the majority of the replies to your comment. Now imagine twelve of those people on a jury and a defendant who isn't mother teresa. That's how.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  Now I'm imagining if you were on the jury because you don't know what you're talking about. It's just not entrapment. If an FBI agent sells you a baseball bat and you kill someone with it, that's hardly entrapment. There's lots of actual terrible things the FBI does that there's no reason to make something out of nothing.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    It's never that cut and clear. They're usually going out of their way to create some situation that temps people who don't normally do that type of crime to do it. The quintessential example is a bait car with the keys in it. Every real car theif walks right on by and after a week of it sitting there they nab some teenager with a weed dealing prior and then throw the book. Yeah, he did steal it but he probably wouldn't have if he didn't walk by it sitting there with the keys in it for an f-ing week. Frequently when it's "real crime" they're going after informants are involved and that often muddies the waters a lot since the informant is usually trying to get a break on some other charge.
    - Capricorn2481 2y ago
      > They're usually going out of their way to create some situation that temps people who don't normally do that type of crime to do it So you're just making up that they did that here because your gut says they usually do that? > The quintessential example is a bait car with the keys in it. Every real car theif walks right on by and after a week of it sitting there they nab some teenager and then throw the book. Yeah, he did steal it but he probably wouldn't have if he didn't walk by it sitting there with the keys in it for an f-ing week. We're looking at multiple individuals collaborating long-term saying they can "control the pump and dump" and do "inside trading easily." These are just scammers doing scam things.
Capricorn2481 2y ago
Entrapment would be if they encouraged people to break the law who otherwise wouldn't be pre-disposed to doing that. It's a fairly difficult thing to prove, but nothing they talk about here rises anywhere close to that. They just made their own coin.
CPLX 2y ago
They were targeting companies that performed market manipulation as a service for creators of crypto coins. So they created a coin to pose as a customer of this service. It’s just not entrapment at all, it’s not similar or close to entrapment either. It’s analogous to posing as a drug dealer to bust money laundering services, or posing as a car thief to bust a fencing operation.
samatman 2y ago
Fundamentally, it's not entrapment because entrapment doesn't mean what many of us, myself included, feel that it should mean. The crime was committed. So the burden of proof falls on the defendant to demonstrate entrapment, which only happens if they can make a convincing case that they were not otherwise inclined or likely to commit the crime. That's quite difficult to do when, in fact, they did commit the crime. I think the standard should be stiffer: it should need a preponderance of evidence (not proof beyond reasonable doubt) that the defendant either also committed similar crimes, or was demonstrably predisposed to committing the crime in question. I rather suspect that the defendants in this case would not be able to mount that defense either. But I've grown quite tired of reading about the FBI hitting up some random resentful teenager and talking him into buying a fake bomb.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > it should need a preponderance of evidence (not proof beyond reasonable doubt) that the defendant either also committed similar crimes That seems to be true here. They didn’t just set up a bait car, they followed it to the yard where the thieves stored their other stolen cars.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
phil21 2y ago
For all intents and purposes entrapment basically doesn’t exist according to modern court interpretation. If you as a layman think it’s entrapment it’s probably not.
- nimbius 2y ago
  So, for clarification: Police are allowed to set up stings . if you walk in to a crack house and willingly buy crack, thats on you. You broke the law and there was intention to do so. If the government say, gave you money and told you to invest it with their friend at glowcoin to dump it, that would be entrapment. Local us government agencies at the state level routinely get slapped down for entrapment. The FBI, not so much...
  - pests 2y ago
    In my view it gets iffy in some situations. If they set up that crackhouse in a neighborhood with no crack, where no one knows where to get crack and there are no users... Then the person walking in wouldn't have been doing so if they didn't set up the trap in the first place. Giving it as an option.. allows a crime to be committed that otherwise wouldn't.
nostrademons 2y ago
It'd depend heavily on what the specific circumstances of the FBI's actions were. Creating a coin to investigate pump & dumps is not entrapment. That's a legal action, and one that many legit people and businesses do. It's akin to standing up a server on the Internet to see who hacks it. If they approached a market maker who was not otherwise marketing pump & dumps and said "Hey, I have this coin, can you pump it up so I can exit with a profit?" and the market maker replies "This is not normally something we do, we're not interested" and then the FBI keeps approaching them with progressively higher prices until they give in, they'd have a good case for entrapment. If they threaten the market maker's family, it'd be a very good case. But note that even if it's the FBI doing the approaching, but the market maker just says "Sure, here's the price", it's still not entrapment. In that situation they're still clearly willing to commit crimes.
fragmede 2y ago
Entrapment is when the police threaten you into doing something you wouldn't normally do. I'll kill your daughter if you don't rob the bank. If you weren't going to rob the bank and you just happened to have bank robbing tools and you really weren't going to use them, that's actually totally fine. if it was the cops threatening you that made you rob the bank then that's entrapment.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Threaten, or beg/cajole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States They tried to push him into ordering CSAM for years, with fake penpals, fake advocacy organizations, fake catalogs, etc. Gave up repeatedly, but after three years they finally got him to bite.
EasyMark 2y ago
Entrapment is sitting at a bar and pushing someone to take the prostitute at the end of the bar for hotel room transaction. Whereas if you proposition the FBI agent who is just sitting at the bar looking cute and offer her money for sex, that’s a legitimate bust.

cyanydeez 2y ago

By not pumping and dumping?

daniel_iversen 2y ago

Came here to ask the same. I guess it's entrapment when law enforcement induces a person to commit a crime they otherwise wouldn't have.. so maybe it depends on how hard and well they marketed it? :) It's such a fine line - both legally maybe (IANAL) but certainly morally I feel.

JackYoustra 2y ago

law enforcement has limited resources, and must try to catch the most criminals and dissuade the most crime given said resources. It's especially bad in tax these days, there are tens of thousands of people with incomes over a million dollars that the US doesn't have the capacity to go after.

vlovich123 2y ago
That’s the IRS not the FBI.
benmmurphy 2y ago
It is a complex situation. The worst case scenario from these entrapment operations is the FBI incentives people into a committing a crime they would otherwise not have committed. The end result is more crime, but maybe it kind of nets out because FBI has 100% success and victims are made whole but then you have the sunk cost of this FBI work. The more optimal case is the FBI nabs people who would have otherwise committed another crime and this is a more efficient way of dealing with these people than investigating real crimes. My concern is the FBI doesn’t actually try and determine which is the best allocation of resources but just presses the button that makes the FBI look best. Investigating real crimes is a lot more difficult than investigating these ‘sting’ crimes so if investigating ‘sting’ crimes was less efficient then it might be incorrectly priotized.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ceejayoz 2y ago

It’s only entrapment if you push someone into doing something they wouldn’t normally do. If the FBI threatens your family to get you to commit a crime, that’s entrapment. If you pull up to a sex worker and proposition them, but it turns out to be a cop, that’s not entrapment. Because you were looking to commit the crime.

soco 2y ago
People: coins are great because everybody can create them. FBI: creates coins. People: not like that

jsheard 2y ago

IANAL but my understanding is it's only entrapment if they encouraged the other parties to commit crimes they may not have otherwise, if those other parties approached FBIcoin with a proposal to do crimes entirely of their own accord then it's a kosher sting operation.

potato3732842 2y ago

>How is this not entrapment? Look at the majority of the replies to your comment. Now imagine twelve of those people on a jury and a defendant who isn't mother teresa. That's how.

Capricorn2481 2y ago
Now I'm imagining if you were on the jury because you don't know what you're talking about. It's just not entrapment. If an FBI agent sells you a baseball bat and you kill someone with it, that's hardly entrapment. There's lots of actual terrible things the FBI does that there's no reason to make something out of nothing.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  It's never that cut and clear. They're usually going out of their way to create some situation that temps people who don't normally do that type of crime to do it. The quintessential example is a bait car with the keys in it. Every real car theif walks right on by and after a week of it sitting there they nab some teenager with a weed dealing prior and then throw the book. Yeah, he did steal it but he probably wouldn't have if he didn't walk by it sitting there with the keys in it for an f-ing week. Frequently when it's "real crime" they're going after informants are involved and that often muddies the waters a lot since the informant is usually trying to get a break on some other charge.
  - Capricorn2481 2y ago
    > They're usually going out of their way to create some situation that temps people who don't normally do that type of crime to do it So you're just making up that they did that here because your gut says they usually do that? > The quintessential example is a bait car with the keys in it. Every real car theif walks right on by and after a week of it sitting there they nab some teenager and then throw the book. Yeah, he did steal it but he probably wouldn't have if he didn't walk by it sitting there with the keys in it for an f-ing week. We're looking at multiple individuals collaborating long-term saying they can "control the pump and dump" and do "inside trading easily." These are just scammers doing scam things.

Capricorn2481 2y ago

Entrapment would be if they encouraged people to break the law who otherwise wouldn't be pre-disposed to doing that. It's a fairly difficult thing to prove, but nothing they talk about here rises anywhere close to that. They just made their own coin.

CPLX 2y ago

They were targeting companies that performed market manipulation as a service for creators of crypto coins. So they created a coin to pose as a customer of this service. It’s just not entrapment at all, it’s not similar or close to entrapment either. It’s analogous to posing as a drug dealer to bust money laundering services, or posing as a car thief to bust a fencing operation.

samatman 2y ago

Fundamentally, it's not entrapment because entrapment doesn't mean what many of us, myself included, feel that it should mean. The crime was committed. So the burden of proof falls on the defendant to demonstrate entrapment, which only happens if they can make a convincing case that they were not otherwise inclined or likely to commit the crime. That's quite difficult to do when, in fact, they did commit the crime. I think the standard should be stiffer: it should need a preponderance of evidence (not proof beyond reasonable doubt) that the defendant either also committed similar crimes, or was demonstrably predisposed to committing the crime in question. I rather suspect that the defendants in this case would not be able to mount that defense either. But I've grown quite tired of reading about the FBI hitting up some random resentful teenager and talking him into buying a fake bomb.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it should need a preponderance of evidence (not proof beyond reasonable doubt) that the defendant either also committed similar crimes That seems to be true here. They didn’t just set up a bait car, they followed it to the yard where the thieves stored their other stolen cars.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

phil21 2y ago

For all intents and purposes entrapment basically doesn’t exist according to modern court interpretation. If you as a layman think it’s entrapment it’s probably not.

nimbius 2y ago
So, for clarification: Police are allowed to set up stings . if you walk in to a crack house and willingly buy crack, thats on you. You broke the law and there was intention to do so. If the government say, gave you money and told you to invest it with their friend at glowcoin to dump it, that would be entrapment. Local us government agencies at the state level routinely get slapped down for entrapment. The FBI, not so much...
- pests 2y ago
  In my view it gets iffy in some situations. If they set up that crackhouse in a neighborhood with no crack, where no one knows where to get crack and there are no users... Then the person walking in wouldn't have been doing so if they didn't set up the trap in the first place. Giving it as an option.. allows a crime to be committed that otherwise wouldn't.

nostrademons 2y ago

It'd depend heavily on what the specific circumstances of the FBI's actions were. Creating a coin to investigate pump & dumps is not entrapment. That's a legal action, and one that many legit people and businesses do. It's akin to standing up a server on the Internet to see who hacks it. If they approached a market maker who was not otherwise marketing pump & dumps and said "Hey, I have this coin, can you pump it up so I can exit with a profit?" and the market maker replies "This is not normally something we do, we're not interested" and then the FBI keeps approaching them with progressively higher prices until they give in, they'd have a good case for entrapment. If they threaten the market maker's family, it'd be a very good case. But note that even if it's the FBI doing the approaching, but the market maker just says "Sure, here's the price", it's still not entrapment. In that situation they're still clearly willing to commit crimes.

fragmede 2y ago

Entrapment is when the police threaten you into doing something you wouldn't normally do. I'll kill your daughter if you don't rob the bank. If you weren't going to rob the bank and you just happened to have bank robbing tools and you really weren't going to use them, that's actually totally fine. if it was the cops threatening you that made you rob the bank then that's entrapment.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Threaten, or beg/cajole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._United_States They tried to push him into ordering CSAM for years, with fake penpals, fake advocacy organizations, fake catalogs, etc. Gave up repeatedly, but after three years they finally got him to bite.

EasyMark 2y ago

Entrapment is sitting at a bar and pushing someone to take the prostitute at the end of the bar for hotel room transaction. Whereas if you proposition the FBI agent who is just sitting at the bar looking cute and offer her money for sex, that’s a legitimate bust.