from the comment section (3rd one):
Foxpup
January 30, 2014 - 12:40
“accused of selling over $1 million in bitcoins to Silk Road users, who would then use them to buy drugs and other illicit items”
That’s not actually what he’s accused of. At all. (Don’t believe everything you read in the mainstream media.) He is actually accused of deliberately assisting his customer in structuring his transactions and hiding their true origin to avoid raising red flags with the exchange’s payment processor while keeping the rest of the exchange’s employees out of the loop (in fact, he allegedly told the co-founder that the customer would be banned from the exchange due to the illegal nature of his business (which he knew about), but secretly allowed the customer to continue using the exchange despite the “ban”). This is indeed money laundering. Though whether money laundering should be a crime and whether he’s actually guilty and the state can prove that is another matter altogether.
Ninja
January 30, 2014 - 12:54
Is this what the arrest warrant and the judicial process say (providing the police gave a shit to due process and got one)?
Foxpup
January 30, 2014 - 13:45
Yes. Specifically, he is charged with one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business (in connection with his customer’s Silk Road business, which he allegedly assisted in running, though he didn’t actually own it), one count of money laundering conspiracy (the conspiracy I just described), and one count of willful failure to file suspicious activity report (as the exchange’s AML compliance officer, he was legally required to report his customer’s illegal activity, instead of actively assisting in it and covering it up, which is exactly the opposite of what an AML compliance officer is supposed to do).
To be clear, I’m not saying that any or all of these things should be illegal, but it’s impossible to have a meaning debate on the subject without getting the facts straight as to what the alleged crime actually is. In particular, he was *not* arrested for merely selling bitcoins to Silk Road users, which is not money laundering and not even illegal (if it were, probably every bitcoin exchange in the country would be raided).
