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This is one of the few times I am with the US point of view. Stealing thousand of bank accounts isn't a small crime. If anyone here found his bank account empty

This is one of the few times I am with the US point of view. Stealing thousand of bank accounts isn't a small crime. If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit? If one person commited suicide, or lost his house, etc due to a theft caused by these guys, is it ok? He isn't a teenager who downloaded a song, he isn't a security researcher who was just playing around, he isn't a whistleblower who wanted to protect our privacy by informing us, they didn't ran a service to help oppressed people reach out; they are bank robbers, top notch bank robbers if they compromised so many accounts.

scotty79 13y ago
How many bank officials that were responsible for even more losses are serving their 67 years in prison? Money is just money. It's just means of deciding who gets to use the stuff our machines produced. Serious crimes are those that do actual damage, like killing someone, destroying his life or destroying serious amount of some resource. Making money change hands unfairly doesn't warrant life of inprisonment.
- andmarios 13y ago
  I am totally for jail time for bankers. But saying money is just money, isn't true. Money buy the food, pay the rent, pay the doctor. In today's world, stripping someone from his money may be equal stripping him from his dignity. In Greece for example we had hundred of suicides in the last years due to the austerity measures. People who worked all their life lost their jobs, hit rock bottom and between ending up homeless or imposing on their relatives, they chose to end their life. Are you sure that none of the 45.000 or so victims of the defendants didn't have their life ruined or commit suicide?
  - scotty79 13y ago
    I'm not saying theft is not at all harmful. Only that it's not so serious as killing. When you have money stolen form your bank account case is usually more complicated. This is a failure of bank security and sometimes banks take or are forced to take responsibility. So often the victims of theft don't suffer more than a bit of inconvenience and the real victim left is the bank or insurance companies, and they are only victims of risk that is inherent to their business. Of course they pass cost of this risk to all of their customers so you might argue that they are harmed. But they could pick bank that deals better with the risks. But the banks that deal better with the risk could also have higher prices just because their competition has higher prices, so, some win, some loose. Money unfairly changes hands, but nothing was actually lost apart from effects of emotional turmoil. Just some money was transferd to people that have larger tolerance for risk than typical worker/consumer. Almost all people recover even after actually loosing all of their savings, and I don't know if those particular criminals wiped the accounts clean. I sincerly hope that noone commited suicide because of this but among 45000 people there bound to be some unstable ones. I'm not sure if criminals can be responsible for such cases. At least not much more than a singer who recorded sad song that nudged some poor bloke to commit suicide when he heard in on the radio. I am very sad about what's happened in Greece but I see it more as a sytem failure than result of criminal activity. I'm not sure why someone would kill himself to not be a burden to his family after loosing a job. I'd personally just pack up and walk towards border without saying goodbye. It's same act of cowardience but without much of accompaning waste.
pkinsky 13y ago
If the US were to apply this same principle to our bankers and white collar criminals then we might have a leg to stand on. As it is, this isn't an argument the government of the United States can make in good faith.
- rayiner 13y ago
  In the US, white collar criminals very often get jail time.
doktrin 13y ago
This is a fair counter point, but there's very little short of capital crimes that truly (IMO) warrants a pseudo-life sentence in a US max prison. The conditions are horrific by the standards of developing nations, to say nothing of other developed countries. The fact that our legal system routinely doles out punishments that are not in proportion to the crime is quite reason enough to deny extradition.
caf 13y ago
Personally I have come around to the view that purely financial crimes should merit only financial punishments, of a sufficient magnitude to deter the crime. I'd like to think that I would be rational enough to maintain that position even if I was the victim of such a crime.
- mikeash 13y ago
  The trouble is that I'm not sure there is a sufficient magnitude to deter all financial crimes. There's an inherent limit to how much financial punishment you can mete out, after all. You can permanently impoverish a person, and that's it. Many people are already permanently impoverished, in which case a financial crime would basically be no risk, with a large potential reward if they can get away with it. Edit: "deter all financial crimes" is poor wording. Of course you can't deter all crimes, and as such that shouldn't be a goal. What I'm really trying to get at is that such a punishment system would give you a large number of people for whom it's not really a punishment at all, or at least not a very significant one.
- rayiner 13y ago
  That's ours poor people who have nothing to lose. What do you do when a guy whose broke steals a million dollars?
  - ansgri 13y ago
    take it away and give her some prison time, in this case. The problem is, of course, that in the prison she will be taught how to steal professionally, so an ideal rehabilitative prison should prevent any contact between inmates.
flexie 13y ago
If I found my bank account empty I would rather that the thief got away without punishment than sending the thief to jail for 67 years. I suspect many if not most of the victims would feel the same. There is a real consideration to make to victims who don't want to be part of or reason for any cruel punishments.
- arkades 13y ago
  I suspect not. Most people - especially in America these days - live in tenuous circumstances, and "[finding] my bank account empty" would quite literally ruin their lives. For most people, that would be many times the provocation needed for them to feel justified in ruining a thief's life in exchange.
  - phreanix 13y ago
    You realize of course that bank accounts are insured? Editing bec I can't reply somehow: The case you have was "tenuous circumstances" I myself have experienced having my account cleaned out of a couple of thousand dollars (stolen/compromised ATM), and the bank had my funds back in 3 days. Pretty sure I won't be ruined in that time frame. Anybody who has 250k in the bank isn't living in tenuous Circumstances.
    - arkades 13y ago
      Not quite... FDIC requires the government to pay you back for the insured (250k) amount but sets no timetable for this repayment. Simply, "as soon as possible." I've had several attorneys (that's what I get for marrying one) tell me explicitly that although the official FDIC policy is "as soon as possible" - which, granted, if you're a single point of failure (i.e., a small local bank) can be as soon as a few days - can be extended effectively indefinitely in cases where, for instance, a major bank fails, or several major banks are robbed concurrently. Granted, you could sue for this, since you could argue that perhaps they're not moving as fast as they can be, but at that point you're not going to have the money to sue them with. Now, if you have a solid job and money across several accounts under banks that are orthogonal with respect to being swindled, hey, you're OK. You'll hold out for the eventual repayment. If, on the other hand, you're in the same situation as most Americans these days, you had better hope that when you need the FDIC you're one of the exceptional few rather than part of a mob, because you could very well see your life derailed before you get your safety net back.
mikeash 13y ago
According to the article, one of the suspects faces 95 years in prison. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder in Virginia, for example, is 40 years. You could argue that e.g. 5 years is not enough. But I think it would be hard to argue against the idea that 95 years is far too much, when it's twice as much as the maximum you can get for deliberately killing a person in my home state, as long as you didn't plan the killing in advance.
- gamblor956 13y ago
  That is 40 years for a single crime. These individuals are charged with multiple crimes. Hence, the theoretical maximum increases significantly. However, in practice sentences for multiple crimes are either imposed concurrently or, if imposed sequentially, are substantially reduced to be more reasonable (but not necessarily completely fair) when compared to other felonies.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Unless you can convince me that those multiple crimes are worth more than twice the sentence you get for murdering somebody, I don't really see why it matters. I understand that he's facing 95 years because the sentences potentially add together. Well, that's part of the problem.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      The sentences potentially add together as much as a bullet may potentially self-fire. This is the same thing we saw with Aaron Swartz's case, the media and prosecution want a number to describe the seriousness of the charges and so they add together the individual maximums of all of the individual charges, despite that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines would not actually call for consecutive sentences here (unless perhaps I'm missing some aggravating circumstances).
      - mikeash 13y ago
        And this, too, is part of the problem. American prosecutors want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to threaten people with "95 years in prison!" But at the same time they want to show that they don't punish people with undue harshness. Is a foreign country supposed to ignore the maximum penalty an extradition candidate faces, and go with the particulars of how the US justice system usually works, especially when prosecutors will happily threaten people with the theoretical maximum whenever it suits them?
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
> If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit? Yes I would. Anything more would be completely disproportionate and not constructive. 5 years is a very severe sentence for a non-violent crime by someone who is not an acute threat to the safety of others. I don't have any thirst for medieval revenge. I would be more interested in ways to get my money back. And I would not want to be in any way responsible for the culprit to suffer the human rights abuse of the American prison system. If it were up to me, my country would never, ever extradite to the US.
dylangs1030 13y ago
I would be okay with a maximum sentence of five years. I believe it's important to consider prison as rehabilitation, not as vengeance. The tone of your consideration makes it clear that you'd want him in jail only for vengeance - it's not up to you to "be okay" with the offender's sentence. All that matters is that it is appropriate. Depending on the prison, I would be okay with a criminal spending only five years for every degree of murder save for first degree. I can assure you, you'll get over your bank account being empty. Yes, I know, you could lose a substantial amount of money. But there is insurance for these sorts of things (despite it not being foolproof), and I don't think you fully consider how five years of prison can change you.
- walshemj 13y ago
  what for all bank robbery? You cant have lesser sentences for a cyber version of a crime it makes a mockery of natural justice.
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    I don't think you should have more than five years for physically robbing a bank (assuming that's the only charge against you) either. Again, that's just my opinion. But I'm being consistent - whether or not it happened online is meaningless to me.
    - ks 13y ago
      Robbing a bank in person is a completely different crime. Many victims suffer mentally for years afterwards with PTSD and other issues
      - dylangs1030 13y ago
        If you read the context of my comment (it being a reply to another comment), I think it would be more clear that I'm not minimizing physical bank robberies. It's more about me not lessening the sentence for cyber crime.
  - 13y ago

scotty79 13y ago

How many bank officials that were responsible for even more losses are serving their 67 years in prison? Money is just money. It's just means of deciding who gets to use the stuff our machines produced. Serious crimes are those that do actual damage, like killing someone, destroying his life or destroying serious amount of some resource. Making money change hands unfairly doesn't warrant life of inprisonment.

andmarios 13y ago
I am totally for jail time for bankers. But saying money is just money, isn't true. Money buy the food, pay the rent, pay the doctor. In today's world, stripping someone from his money may be equal stripping him from his dignity. In Greece for example we had hundred of suicides in the last years due to the austerity measures. People who worked all their life lost their jobs, hit rock bottom and between ending up homeless or imposing on their relatives, they chose to end their life. Are you sure that none of the 45.000 or so victims of the defendants didn't have their life ruined or commit suicide?
- scotty79 13y ago
  I'm not saying theft is not at all harmful. Only that it's not so serious as killing. When you have money stolen form your bank account case is usually more complicated. This is a failure of bank security and sometimes banks take or are forced to take responsibility. So often the victims of theft don't suffer more than a bit of inconvenience and the real victim left is the bank or insurance companies, and they are only victims of risk that is inherent to their business. Of course they pass cost of this risk to all of their customers so you might argue that they are harmed. But they could pick bank that deals better with the risks. But the banks that deal better with the risk could also have higher prices just because their competition has higher prices, so, some win, some loose. Money unfairly changes hands, but nothing was actually lost apart from effects of emotional turmoil. Just some money was transferd to people that have larger tolerance for risk than typical worker/consumer. Almost all people recover even after actually loosing all of their savings, and I don't know if those particular criminals wiped the accounts clean. I sincerly hope that noone commited suicide because of this but among 45000 people there bound to be some unstable ones. I'm not sure if criminals can be responsible for such cases. At least not much more than a singer who recorded sad song that nudged some poor bloke to commit suicide when he heard in on the radio. I am very sad about what's happened in Greece but I see it more as a sytem failure than result of criminal activity. I'm not sure why someone would kill himself to not be a burden to his family after loosing a job. I'd personally just pack up and walk towards border without saying goodbye. It's same act of cowardience but without much of accompaning waste.

pkinsky 13y ago

If the US were to apply this same principle to our bankers and white collar criminals then we might have a leg to stand on. As it is, this isn't an argument the government of the United States can make in good faith.

rayiner 13y ago
In the US, white collar criminals very often get jail time.

doktrin 13y ago

This is a fair counter point, but there's very little short of capital crimes that truly (IMO) warrants a pseudo-life sentence in a US max prison. The conditions are horrific by the standards of developing nations, to say nothing of other developed countries. The fact that our legal system routinely doles out punishments that are not in proportion to the crime is quite reason enough to deny extradition.

caf 13y ago

Personally I have come around to the view that purely financial crimes should merit only financial punishments, of a sufficient magnitude to deter the crime. I'd like to think that I would be rational enough to maintain that position even if I was the victim of such a crime.

mikeash 13y ago
The trouble is that I'm not sure there is a sufficient magnitude to deter all financial crimes. There's an inherent limit to how much financial punishment you can mete out, after all. You can permanently impoverish a person, and that's it. Many people are already permanently impoverished, in which case a financial crime would basically be no risk, with a large potential reward if they can get away with it. Edit: "deter all financial crimes" is poor wording. Of course you can't deter all crimes, and as such that shouldn't be a goal. What I'm really trying to get at is that such a punishment system would give you a large number of people for whom it's not really a punishment at all, or at least not a very significant one.
rayiner 13y ago
That's ours poor people who have nothing to lose. What do you do when a guy whose broke steals a million dollars?
- ansgri 13y ago
  take it away and give her some prison time, in this case. The problem is, of course, that in the prison she will be taught how to steal professionally, so an ideal rehabilitative prison should prevent any contact between inmates.

flexie 13y ago

If I found my bank account empty I would rather that the thief got away without punishment than sending the thief to jail for 67 years. I suspect many if not most of the victims would feel the same. There is a real consideration to make to victims who don't want to be part of or reason for any cruel punishments.

arkades 13y ago
I suspect not. Most people - especially in America these days - live in tenuous circumstances, and "[finding] my bank account empty" would quite literally ruin their lives. For most people, that would be many times the provocation needed for them to feel justified in ruining a thief's life in exchange.
- phreanix 13y ago
  You realize of course that bank accounts are insured? Editing bec I can't reply somehow: The case you have was "tenuous circumstances" I myself have experienced having my account cleaned out of a couple of thousand dollars (stolen/compromised ATM), and the bank had my funds back in 3 days. Pretty sure I won't be ruined in that time frame. Anybody who has 250k in the bank isn't living in tenuous Circumstances.
  - arkades 13y ago
    Not quite... FDIC requires the government to pay you back for the insured (250k) amount but sets no timetable for this repayment. Simply, "as soon as possible." I've had several attorneys (that's what I get for marrying one) tell me explicitly that although the official FDIC policy is "as soon as possible" - which, granted, if you're a single point of failure (i.e., a small local bank) can be as soon as a few days - can be extended effectively indefinitely in cases where, for instance, a major bank fails, or several major banks are robbed concurrently. Granted, you could sue for this, since you could argue that perhaps they're not moving as fast as they can be, but at that point you're not going to have the money to sue them with. Now, if you have a solid job and money across several accounts under banks that are orthogonal with respect to being swindled, hey, you're OK. You'll hold out for the eventual repayment. If, on the other hand, you're in the same situation as most Americans these days, you had better hope that when you need the FDIC you're one of the exceptional few rather than part of a mob, because you could very well see your life derailed before you get your safety net back.

mikeash 13y ago

According to the article, one of the suspects faces 95 years in prison. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder in Virginia, for example, is 40 years. You could argue that e.g. 5 years is not enough. But I think it would be hard to argue against the idea that 95 years is far too much, when it's twice as much as the maximum you can get for deliberately killing a person in my home state, as long as you didn't plan the killing in advance.

gamblor956 13y ago
That is 40 years for a single crime. These individuals are charged with multiple crimes. Hence, the theoretical maximum increases significantly. However, in practice sentences for multiple crimes are either imposed concurrently or, if imposed sequentially, are substantially reduced to be more reasonable (but not necessarily completely fair) when compared to other felonies.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Unless you can convince me that those multiple crimes are worth more than twice the sentence you get for murdering somebody, I don't really see why it matters. I understand that he's facing 95 years because the sentences potentially add together. Well, that's part of the problem.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    The sentences potentially add together as much as a bullet may potentially self-fire. This is the same thing we saw with Aaron Swartz's case, the media and prosecution want a number to describe the seriousness of the charges and so they add together the individual maximums of all of the individual charges, despite that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines would not actually call for consecutive sentences here (unless perhaps I'm missing some aggravating circumstances).
    - mikeash 13y ago
      And this, too, is part of the problem. American prosecutors want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to threaten people with "95 years in prison!" But at the same time they want to show that they don't punish people with undue harshness. Is a foreign country supposed to ignore the maximum penalty an extradition candidate faces, and go with the particulars of how the US justice system usually works, especially when prosecutors will happily threaten people with the theoretical maximum whenever it suits them?

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

> If anyone here found his bank account empty, would he be ok with a top of 5 years of jail time for the culprit? Yes I would. Anything more would be completely disproportionate and not constructive. 5 years is a very severe sentence for a non-violent crime by someone who is not an acute threat to the safety of others. I don't have any thirst for medieval revenge. I would be more interested in ways to get my money back. And I would not want to be in any way responsible for the culprit to suffer the human rights abuse of the American prison system. If it were up to me, my country would never, ever extradite to the US.

dylangs1030 13y ago

I would be okay with a maximum sentence of five years. I believe it's important to consider prison as rehabilitation, not as vengeance. The tone of your consideration makes it clear that you'd want him in jail only for vengeance - it's not up to you to "be okay" with the offender's sentence. All that matters is that it is appropriate. Depending on the prison, I would be okay with a criminal spending only five years for every degree of murder save for first degree. I can assure you, you'll get over your bank account being empty. Yes, I know, you could lose a substantial amount of money. But there is insurance for these sorts of things (despite it not being foolproof), and I don't think you fully consider how five years of prison can change you.

walshemj 13y ago
what for all bank robbery? You cant have lesser sentences for a cyber version of a crime it makes a mockery of natural justice.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  I don't think you should have more than five years for physically robbing a bank (assuming that's the only charge against you) either. Again, that's just my opinion. But I'm being consistent - whether or not it happened online is meaningless to me.
  - ks 13y ago
    Robbing a bank in person is a completely different crime. Many victims suffer mentally for years afterwards with PTSD and other issues
    - dylangs1030 13y ago
      If you read the context of my comment (it being a reply to another comment), I think it would be more clear that I'm not minimizing physical bank robberies. It's more about me not lessening the sentence for cyber crime.
- 13y ago