Topic: BurtW arrested (update: charges dropped!) - page 18. (Read 74713 times)

Haha was just going to say this myself. Also, from what I read the police confiscated any computers, usbs and even recordable media they had in the house so they likely have direct access to most of his coins that way. I suppose what is interesting about bitcoin is you could have password-protected back-ups with a friend or family and get them to transfer the coins to a secure wallet if you get into trouble.

Do you think he would openly admit it if he did have more?

May I ask you BurtW?Have you given all of your BTC to police?If yes why?They can't prove whether you had 1BTC or 1000BTC?You could have gave them one private key which contained 1BTC but it had many ingoing and outgoing transaction of large sums of BTC and you could have claimed that this is all of your BTC.How would they prove that you had more?

Or perhaps to make sure he did not have a chance to move any bitcoins, or give someone the keys to do so.

EDIT: I see that it was the reasons indeed, according to his wife.

If you ask if you are free to go, and they do not have probable cause to continue to detain you then they have to let you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d7-0TDsxnw

Thats a bit hard on people generally. The cops have been trained specifically on techniques to get you to unwittingly waive your rights.

Your experience was probably exceptional, as there are many cases of people who refused the search, and were forced to wait for hours while K-9 units arrived on the scene. Most people would give in before that happened, thinking that the constitution would protect them.

Most of the examples in his segment would not have happened had people not been ignorant about their rights. It appears that most of the examples generally started as a "routine" traffic stop, then people would answer questions that the answers to are none of the police officer's business. Then to top that off, they consented to searches that the police had no right* to conduct (*by consenting the police were given such right).

If those people knew their rights well enough not to answer questions when a police officer asks if they have money in their car, and to not to consent to a search then the police would never had even known about the money that they stole, let alone seize it.

I am a taxpaying (which is rare under the Obama administration), law abiding citizen with nothing to hide, however when I am asked questions by the police (other then those pertaining to my identity), then I tell them whose business it is not. When I am asked if my property can be searched, I tell them that I do not consent and that they will need a warrant if they want to search my property.

Looking back, I believe I was probably the victim of a police officer who tried to abuse civil forfeiture laws against me. In mid 2009, while I was driving to work I was stopped because the police officer thought I was speeding (~7 MPH over the speed limit). When he first approached my car, one of the first things he asked me was if I had any drugs or weapons in my car - pause for a minute, at the time I was only ~2-3 years out of high school, with no criminal record, never suspected of a crime, not even a conviction for speeding yet he somehow concluded that question might result in a positive answer. He later took my drivers license back to his police car, wrote me a ticket, gave me back my license and the ticket, then confirmed my previous response about drugs and weapons and asked to search my car. I told him I would not consent, he asked why, I told him I don't need a reason and that he would need a warrant, he agreed that I don't need a reason, but said that if I have nothing to hide then I might as well let him search my car, I cited the fourth amendment, he said that I might as well either give him a reason or let him search my car, I told him I do not consent, he asked again, I simply repeated that I do not consent, then he let me go. At the time I thought that he was trying to get me to say that I did not have time (hence get me to admit to the speeding), however looking back I would say that it is safe to speculate that he was hoping to find a slushee machine in my trunk.

Remember:

Under civil forfeiture law, your property is GUILTY until you prove it innocent!!

If Mugabe tried this in Zimbabwe we would fall around laughing at them.   

Its like the old witch hunters putting the witches cat on trial as well.  They are applying medieval jurisprudence to 21st century problems.

Correct, although I would prefer to shift the burden of proof to be greater then simply the preponderance of the evidence in criminal asset forfeiture cases.

One quote from Cornell law library that I find interesting/comical about civil asset forfeiture is:

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Civil Forfeiture (HBO)

So fuckin' funny, yet so fuckin' sad. 9 days later after that video was uploaded on YouTube, this: http://www.jmwagner.com/

Quickseller:

Your idea of a constitutional amendment is a good one and is an avenue that I had not though of.  Thanks.

One thing to clear up:

You exactly describe the distinction between a criminal asset forfeiture which is the "that makes sense" to the average not in law enforcement person kind of forfeiture and civil asset forfeiture which is the "WTF?" no need to go to all the trouble of actually convicting anyone of a crime at all kind of forfeiture we are talking about.  So to be concise:

We both believe that most reasonable people would support a constitutional amendment to end all forms of civil asset forfeiture while leaving criminal asset forfeiture intact as a way to punish those that are convicted of certain crimes and/or as a way to get money back to the victims of these crimes.

Thanks for your great posts.

Well Burt, I'm just going off what I have learned in my personal time selling BTC. In fact, I'm just repeating what many other seasoned traders have said already, and what the company I used to work for has told me.

There are sellers who process millions of $ worth of BTC transactions through their bank accounts, have been investigated by the FBI, and cleared. They are all registered with FINCEN and implement AML / KYC policy.

The feds can, theoretically, arrest anyone who sells BTC without being registered as an MSB. I hold no illusions that they can pretty much do whatever they want if they feel like it. It happened to you, it could happen to anyone.  And I know full well what their motivations are (greed, among other things.)

I was just stating the obvious that it is possible to mitigate (but not necessarily completely eliminate) your risk by following certain guidelines. Hopefully, it will be helpful to someone. They will figure this out on their own anyway.

That being said, I very much hope you prevail in your fight against government over-reach. I truly wish you the best of luck.

That would be awesomely hilarious if were not so sad.Our government believes that ownership of property is only subject to their whims. People like us deisre to actually own our currency and they prosecute us for essentially exercising what should be part of our inalienable rights. I wish all the best for you and your family Burt.

It should be at a congressional level. (even though I believe the practice to be unconstitutional, I think a constitutional amendment would be in order prohibiting civil forfeiture except in cases when a person has been convicted of a crime, and it can be proven that the assets being seized were acquired as a result of the specific crime the person committed - for example if someone robs a bank and steals $20,000 in cash and then goes out and buys a $20,000 car two days later, and is later convicted of robbing the bank then the car can be seized -- this constitutional amendment would prevent any kind of ambiguity).

I do agree that addressing this at a federal/constitutional level would no doubt be a very high bar to reach, however doing so would stop civil forfeiture across the entire country. Addressing it at a local level means having to go through the same process 50 times for each of the 50 states, plus thousands more at the city/local level. Did you get the law changed in the town you work in? If so, then great, but what happens when you work in a neighboring town where the law still allows equitable sharing?
I also saw those cases. I am not sure of the exact details of these cases, however I do not agree with the court's legal conclusion. The court now has different justices then it did on each of those cases. Those cases is also why I think a constitutional amendment is in order to prevent law enforcement from finding loopholes in case law.

source - however I was actually incorrect, it is 41%, not 81% - either way your point is still valid - it would be valid even if the percentage is 100% because people still need to bear the expense of disputing the forfeiture and often do not receive everything back from the government (they settle for less then 100%).
I believe this. There really are no checks and balances to prevent this kind of abuse.

I don't think very many people that "won" got all their money back, I imagine that very few (I guesstimate close to 0) got all their money back, and after accounting for legal costs it is probably even lower. I hope that my previous post does not come across as advocating for civil forfeiture, because that is not my stance.
There becomes a point where it is no longer economical to continue to pursue a case to get your money back. This is just another reason why the appellate and supreme court does not hear more of these cases.
I don't think everyone who challenges a civil forfeiture suit in court looses. If you can present credible information saying this is true, then I would seriously lose faith in our court system and our country.
 This shows that the opposition is bipartisan.
I had never even heard of civil forfeiture before the Washington Post had published it's story about how much money governments are making from it and how much it is abused. I imaging that the same is true for a lot of people. I think there has been more public debate over the use of civil forfeiture over the last several months, and I really have not heard many people arguing to keep it in place.

I have heard it said that free legal advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.

My favorite part of reading about civil asset forfeiture has got to be the case names.  You just can't read or better yet say out loud:

"United States v. $405,089.23"

without a slight smile on your face (through the tears of course).  Try it.

https://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/supreme-court-rules-that-civil-forfeiture-is-not-punishment-for-double-jeopardy-purposes

Um, sorry, "no" - please see my last post, above... and/or please ENUMERATE exactly and *precisely* what this "Hey Just Get A License" non-argument response, SPECIFICALLY *Means*...?

What's the "license" exactly?
What does it cost?
Where are the exact forms to fill out?
With *exactly* WHAT agency, where?
Of the Fed or State (or even local) government?

LOOK, unless and until *somebody* around here can specifically and EXACTLY do this, in some detail, I personally don't wanna even HEAR one more instance of this goddamn stupid "Hey Just Get A License, Man" argument response.

Puh-leeze.

That ain't hardly what ANY of this is about. Wake Up.

KEVLARR

P.S. Just posted this and *then* saw your post above... my point stands, i.e. it's not about the Federal FinCEN paperwork, based on what I wrote above and Burt's case involving LOCAL STATE LAWS, this "Get A License" answer is IMHO still an insufficient non-answer...

Yeah... Doesn't matter to me any more. I'm moving to New Zealand. I'm done with this hell hole of a country.

It doesn't cost any money to get registered with FINCEN.

Depending on your state you may not need a state licensure. Getting registered with FINCEN and implementing an effective AML / KYC policy is not particularly expensive, if you do it yourself, but it may be time consuming.

If you pay a compliance company to do your AML / KYC policy for you, it may cost a grand or so. But, you can also do it yourself, if you want to invest some time into research, effectively accomplishing it for free.

I am just giving advice to keep any future would-be BTC sellers from having all their assets seized by the feds incase they decide to go after you like they did Burt.

FINCEN does give a 6 month grace period before you are required to register, it says so on their website. But if you are selling BTC long term and doing any somewhat significant volume of local transactions you should probably register as an MSB and follow AML / KYC policies. Unless you want to take the risk. It's up to you.

I'm just saying, if you are doing really low volume, it probably won't matter. But if one day they decide to prosecute BTC sellers in your state like they have in FL and CO, this could very well happen to anyone. But you can prevent it by being registered as an MSB with FINCEN (which is free) and implementing an AML / KYC policy. For your AML policy, you probably won't be able to do transactions over 3k unless they provide ID and proof of residence. It would probably be a good idea not to do any transactions over 3k, period.

If they mention using the BTC for anything illegal, it's a good idea to assume the customer is an undercover federal agent and you must terminate the transaction immediately.

This is why I have always advised people to use BTC-e or other exchanges which guarantee anonymity. LBC is not reliable. Remember the incident in which 2 Florida guys were jailed for using it.