When you have American citizens as clients, you're automatically doing business in the USA and therefore logically they have jurisfuckingdiction...
When you allegedly launder funds/assets/goods stolen from American citizens you open yourself up to their jurisfuckingdiction...
It really takes almost no brainpower to figure out IF you do business in any country you must comply with their laws.
You think that being in a foreign country is what, some kind of an open invitation to commit crimes in the US??
If you do these kinds of things, if you're big enough to catch LEO's eye then you risk being targeted...
Location of the person/company/whatever is only relevant in terms of catching the person physically and obtaining physical evidence... Sometimes its easier than others.
This is not the fucking Americans policing the world or retaliation for Russian hacking blah blah blah. It's American LEO's trying to protect their citizens from organizations operating against their laws.
I'm sure the Libertarian and conspiracy crowds will love this but logic is completely reasonable in a normal sense of things.
I will concede that this could be simply law enforcement doing what they get paid to do. People havent mentioned it in the zeal to shit on US legal overreach, but this was a collaboration between many different international policing bodies:
I want to thank our international partners at Europol and in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany who worked closely with us to takedown this criminal enterprise.
but why now? do you truly think its a coincidence that we took down three illegal crypto operations in a week? im reasonably sure all three of these investigations have been going on for at least months; the btce operation has obviously been going on for years. again, why conclude all operations pretty much simultaneously?
and this is a pretty weak motivation:
And today, some of the most prolific drug suppliers use what’s called the dark web —which is a collection of hidden websites that you can only access if you mask your identity and your location. And it’s called dark not just because these sites are intentionally hidden. It’s also dark because of what’s sold on many of them: illegal weapons, stolen identities, child pornography and large amounts of deadly drugs.
Today the Department of Justice announces the takedown of the dark web market AlphaBay. This is the largest dark net marketplace takedown in history.
An AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced more than 40,000 illegal vendors for more than 200,000 customers.
By far, most of this activity was in illegal drugs, pouring fuel on the fire of the national drug epidemic. Around the time of takedown of the site, there were more than 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay — more than two-thirds of all listings on AlphaBay.
As of earlier this year, 122 vendors advertised fentanyl and 238 advertised heroin, and we know of several Americans who were killed by drugs sold on Alpha Bay.
so we closed multi year investigations because of the decade old opioid epidemic. interesting indeed. also, pretty alphabay/hansa amounts to a very small percentage of the drug markets.
but this seems to be on target:
This is likely one of the most important criminal case of the year. Make no mistake, the forces of law and justice face a new challenge from the criminals and transnational criminal organizations who think they can commit their crimes with impunity by ‘going dark.’ This case, pursued by dedicated agents and prosecutors, says you are not safe. You cannot hide. We will find you, dismantle your organization and network. And we will prosecute you.
Something else to ponder on (this was prior):
Since then, the Drug Enforcement Administration has reported hundreds of seizures of carfentanil — initially in Ohio, Florida and neighboring states — and in the past few weeks, it's also shown up in New York, Pennsylvania and New England. The DEA says China is the main source for carfentanil and that it's getting to the U.S. through two major routes: Mexico via drug cartels, which are processing and shipping the stuff across the U.S. border, and through the U.S. mail.
From her base in China, Kinetz perused the web to see how easy it was to buy carfentanil. She and her colleagues found that "it was very easy. We certainly got a lot of offers for many different opioids. We were focused initially particularly on carfentanil because it's one of the strongest opioids in the fentanyl class of drugs, and it's been used in the past as a chemical weapon. And just looking on the open internet, I found over a dozen companies that were happy to offer carfentanil for sale. Sometimes they would guarantee delivery to major Western capitals. Some companies would offer advice on how to best sneak packages past customs," she said.
This, doesnt seem like the most effective way to solve
that.
notice the timing of everything: