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Topic: Money laundering via BTC - page 31. (Read 39389 times)

hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 21, 2017, 02:27:00 AM
there is always a group of people out there that takes a personal vendetta approach to very generalized groups, mainly two they call "scammers" and during this money laundering thread the second group labeled "criminals".  there is always going to be people stealing, scamming, dealing drugs and whatever.  if someone big does get busted, the minutes later they are replaced.  law enforcement chases these bitcoin laundering schemes to make the voters feel better, put pressure on the criminals hoping for them to screw up and sometimes collect enough negative information to merit additonal investigation into their overall business practices.  

once the dirty fiat is turned into btc, the law no longer defines any action after that as money laundering.  the famous silk road case did involve tracing funds through the btc network, but the actual charges and the arrest were made based on a hand to hand cash exchange that was intended to become a BTC exchange, but the arrest was made right after the fiat changed hands.

cryptsy was charged based on the facts that they took assets that they promised to hold securely.  any scam that convinces someone to send crypto to another is not considered theft unless there was a written contract.  want to beat the "scammers"?, don't give them your money.

The two biggest cases involving crypto were those.  two of the silk road guys have done a total of six years prison time.  the cryptsy guys, and no one ever tells you guys this, served no jail time based on full cooperation, and.....they made a profit from the court case.  In the early court stages they requested and got the judges permission to consolidate all the cryptos into bitcoin, their seized alt coin wallets were returned to them and all alt coins were converted to BTC at around $250 per BTC.  These coins were kept in something like ten wallets and when the case was finished and they were ordered to repay the value of the stolen alts, the price of BTC was around $685.  They paid their due to the courts and walked away with a huge chunk of BTC left over.  I remember people on this very forum all happy and laughing at how the "scammers' finally got theirs, little did anyone know that the scam was still running, right there in the courtroom, right in front of the judge.
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 251
A Trader & An Investor
January 21, 2017, 01:58:02 AM
Money laundering can be done with any asset. I got to say that since bitcoin is an asset, it is widely used by people to launder money. Money laundering is done by people who know the laws inside out as they are the ones who find loopholes in the existing system and take advantage of it.
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 21, 2017, 01:53:55 AM
It is possible money laundering can be easily done even a normal peroson can do it. Laundering bitcoin now a days is ordinary, but im not saying that all of them was ilegal. Some of them are altcoins which you can convert to bitcoins. Some people uses it as the trading system.

This is happening because of no regulations in the online business industry and what's worse is that people do think that what are they doing is not illegal. Scamming is rampant in this field and i guess until now only those big scams was been on court
From the words itself, "money laundering", it's already considered as illegal activities. If you could make a research, it would be more helpful for you guys to understand. The thing is, ignorance of the law excuses no one, so if ever you are doing it now and you are not caught, expect in the future you will pay.

lol, you really believe these guys are going to pay?  the law is this

Quote
Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 – Criminal Investigation investigates and recommends criminal prosecution for violations of Title 18, USC, Sections 1956 and 1957. These statutes make it illegal to conduct certain financial transactions with proceeds generated through specified unlawful activities, such as narcotics trafficking, Medicare fraud and embezzlement, among others.

they have set court precedence that crypto currency is a commodity and not a financial instrument.  the official list of "certain financial transactios" is

Quote
(1) Whoever, knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, conducts or attempts to conduct such a financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity—
(A)
(i) with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity; or
(ii) with intent to engage in conduct constituting a violation of section 7201 or 7206 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986; or
(B) knowing that the transaction is designed in whole or in part—
(i) to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity; or
(ii) to avoid a transaction reporting requirement under State or Federal law,
shall be sentenced to a fine of not more than $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is greater, or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both. For purposes of this paragraph, a financial transaction shall be considered to be one involving the proceeds of specified unlawful activity if it is part of a set of parallel or dependent transactions, any one of which involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, and all of which are part of a single plan or arrangement.

Once the fiat was used to purchase BTC, which is not covered as a financial instrument modifying operation, the same legally as purchasing pork bellies or crude oil futures, they ceased to be in the realm of "money laundering" legally and entered  into a possible tax evasion charge.

addon:If I personally wanted to legally go after these guys, I would focus on the large scale purchase and sale of a "commodity" over a short period of time.  If those trades caused a significant fluctuation in the price of bitcoin, then i would try for "commodity market" manipulation.
hero member
Activity: 3178
Merit: 661
Live with peace and enjoy life!
January 21, 2017, 01:44:07 AM
It is possible money laundering can be easily done even a normal peroson can do it. Laundering bitcoin now a days is ordinary, but im not saying that all of them was ilegal. Some of them are altcoins which you can convert to bitcoins. Some people uses it as the trading system.

This is happening because of no regulations in the online business industry and what's worse is that people do think that what are they doing is not illegal. Scamming is rampant in this field and i guess until now only those big scams was been on court
From the words itself, "money laundering", it's already considered as illegal activities. If you could make a research, it would be more helpful for you guys to understand. The thing is, ignorance of the law excuses no one, so if ever you are doing it now and you are not caught, expect in the future you will pay.
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 21, 2017, 01:41:22 AM
It is possible money laundering can be easily done even a normal peroson can do it. Laundering bitcoin now a days is ordinary, but im not saying that all of them was ilegal. Some of them are altcoins which you can convert to bitcoins. Some people uses it as the trading system.

This is happening because of no regulations in the online business industry and what's worse is that people do think that what are they doing is not illegal. Scamming is rampant in this field and i guess until now only those big scams was been on court

these are people that do not even care about what is legal, moral or right, but care about covering their ass.  there are those that want to make things so clean and impossible to trace that they will never worry about even being glanced at by the legal system. there is the other group that only goes to the point that they cannot be legally touched.  those are the ones that know every nuance of what they use to do business and protect themselves and know every nuance of the law.  they will use their tainted btc to buy into a side chain and near immediately sell the token and back out to a new bitcoin address.  it is obvious as hell that those are the same coins, but there is no way to prove it and they will stare the cops in the eye and tell to prove it or go away.

i live in florida and in response to your comment about scammers getting to the courtroom, we were in several days of the cryptsy hearings and these were pivitol crypto moments.  about a year before cryptsy, a florida senator made a public statement that bitcoin was not a true ANYTHING and that the florida government would never treat it as anything of value and would never use it in any form.

the final disposition in the cryptsy trial laid out a series of steps that the owners had to follow to return funds.  The actual fiat holdings that connected to client account was less than $500,000, while the combined alts that were to be valued and then paid back were listed in the $2,800,000 range.  

the courts has two ways to go, either demand that the value be paid back in fiat or in crypto.  the reparations would be paid to the florida court system and then distributed to the complainants.  if they ordered them to return crypto, then florida would have officially been declaring it to be a value currency. if they ordered funds to be paid in fiat, then are officially declaring cryptos as comparable to fiat as an exchange asset.  it took more than two weeks for the repayment orders to be hammered out, almost as long as the evidence stage of the hearings.  

the final, ambiguous, ass covering, grey area, political bullshit declaration was this.  bitcoin and other cryptos should be considered valued, tractable commodities and the combined value of these stolen commodities is $x, to be repaid to florida courts and distributed to those harmed.
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
January 21, 2017, 01:40:35 AM
Hello please allow me here to post, I am a newbie but for sure Its possible that those bad people do make bitcoin as their way to money laundering. They don't have fear to violate the laws of the government, but there is a ways to moderate this kind of and there must be proper monitoring for every online wallet transaction made.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 500
January 21, 2017, 01:22:05 AM
It is possible money laundering can be easily done even a normal peroson can do it. Laundering bitcoin now a days is ordinary, but im not saying that all of them was ilegal. Some of them are altcoins which you can convert to bitcoins. Some people uses it as the trading system.

This is happening because of no regulations in the online business industry and what's worse is that people do think that what are they doing is not illegal. Scamming is rampant in this field and i guess until now only those big scams was been on court
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 21, 2017, 01:05:59 AM
That's why bitcoin is being used and abused by those people and it was the preferred medium of payment in the deep web, they are really thanking bitcoin for making them anonymous. Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities still those people manage to do something for it.

i want to bring attention to this line of the quote.

Quote
Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities

even these sites can automate checks on new deposit addresses for their origin.  this is the state that dirty coins start off at.  you have to put so much distance and tx confusion between that moment and the moment you change to fiat that no one will have a clue
The only solution to this is to comply with the law of your respective country, you can launder your money but that does not mean you will not be caught in the future. Remember that bitcoin is good for tracing transactions due to its public ledger.

Normally, for some countries gambling is illegal but I don't think that is a serious offense than selling illegal drugs or weapons and if you are just gambling, you are in the least priority.

Yes there are countries that are tight for implementing their fight against money launderers even here in my country, there are a lot of people who are doing that but it's the same thing but not with bitcoin. Actually there are countries that are implementing serious laws if you are going to get caught that your money came from gambling.

in regards to the gambling law changes, it is not because they care about gambling, it is because any gambling/casino business is a perfect money laundering point for both the owners and the clients.  a single point business where large amounts of money are won and lost and in the end a person can enter with X BTC or fiat and leave hours later with a much higher or smaller amount and no product or service to show for it and no need to explain it to anyone. i have seen many people clean any amount of cash at a casino.  simply walk in, but the whole lot in chips, dump the chips in a bag and go relax for a few days, come back and cash in your chips.  real casinos are not like these crap online things with requirements on withdrawal

Oh I forgot that thing, thanks for mentioning it. A lot of rich people really uses gambling industry to launder money which is not new. And of course the casino operators are going to protect those people since they are in business and they are taking care of their customers. For sure this is also happening with bitcoin casino's.
  that has to be why law enforcement is attacking casino site tainted coins
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 21, 2017, 12:37:10 AM
That's why bitcoin is being used and abused by those people and it was the preferred medium of payment in the deep web, they are really thanking bitcoin for making them anonymous. Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities still those people manage to do something for it.

i want to bring attention to this line of the quote.

Quote
Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities

even these sites can automate checks on new deposit addresses for their origin.  this is the state that dirty coins start off at.  you have to put so much distance and tx confusion between that moment and the moment you change to fiat that no one will have a clue
The only solution to this is to comply with the law of your respective country, you can launder your money but that does not mean you will not be caught in the future. Remember that bitcoin is good for tracing transactions due to its public ledger.

Normally, for some countries gambling is illegal but I don't think that is a serious offense than selling illegal drugs or weapons and if you are just gambling, you are in the least priority.

Yes there are countries that are tight for implementing their fight against money launderers even here in my country, there are a lot of people who are doing that but it's the same thing but not with bitcoin. Actually there are countries that are implementing serious laws if you are going to get caught that your money came from gambling.

in regards to the gambling law changes, it is not because they care about gambling, it is because any gambling/casino business is a perfect money laundering point for both the owners and the clients.  a single point business where large amounts of money are won and lost and in the end a person can enter with X BTC or fiat and leave hours later with a much higher or smaller amount and no product or service to show for it and no need to explain it to anyone. i have seen many people clean any amount of cash at a casino.  simply walk in, but the whole lot in chips, dump the chips in a bag and go relax for a few days, come back and cash in your chips.  real casinos are not like these crap online things with requirements on withdrawal
hero member
Activity: 588
Merit: 500
January 20, 2017, 03:05:14 PM
   When we talk about money laundering I think we need to know that criminals are smarter now then before, and no matter how much governments are trying to end this with new techniques criminals always find a way to cheat the system. I`m sure that criminals are using bitcoins for their illegal activities, I`m just not sure how will someone stop them. Bitcoin offer anonymity, but at what cost? I pass through all this topic, and I didnt find answer on questions that bothers me. Is there a way to prevent criminals from using bitcoins in illegal purposes?

The answer to this is yes, they can be stopped. But it should start from the very root. Before a criminal could launder his/her money by using a bitcoin, for sure they will use exchange sites to deposit their money. That is where everything should start. Know the identity of those who wants to deposit in an exchange, ask where their funds came from and put it on the record, just in case the government wants to ask it, that way, in case the government is starting to trace them and their money, the record is a great evidence.

In case they buy from a person, then that's a different case, but for sure, the one that will sold them bitcoin will also be liable.

   Your suggestion will not work, criminals are using people with clean history. They hire lawyers to control this people, and that is already well known. It will be easy for some gang to find a person with clean record, this person will get a lot of money for this every month.
   How much anonymity can offer bitcoin if we need to register our selfs on exchanges or other sites? And your suggestions have a flaw, in case the government asks, so all they need to do is to ask and that is it? Is this mean goodbye privacy?
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 20, 2017, 12:27:20 AM
It is possible money laundering can be easily done even a normal peroson can do it. Laundering bitcoin now a days is ordinary, but im not saying that all of them was ilegal. Some of them are altcoins which you can convert to bitcoins. Some people uses it as the trading system.

busy side chain coins work as the only thing the public sees in X BTC leaving your wallet and disappearing into the dark side chain. if there are other users on the same side chain, there is no casual, easy way for the public/agencies to know what exiting coins were originally yours.

one of the freelance coders that we employed would just throw fast, random diversions, attacks, mixing and anything that came to his mind.  I watched him run a script one day and asking what it did he showed me.  During his highest traffic times this script submitted huge numbers of NULL scripts that has the wallet addresses on the TX's written plain text/hex in the empty bitspace of those TX's.  The network fees cost some, but it most likely doubled or tripled the work a block parsing program would use.
sr. member
Activity: 546
Merit: 256
January 20, 2017, 12:20:20 AM
It is possible money laundering can be easily done even a normal peroson can do it. Laundering bitcoin now a days is ordinary, but im not saying that all of them was ilegal. Some of them are altcoins which you can convert to bitcoins. Some people uses it as the trading system.
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 20, 2017, 12:16:02 AM
there is so much attention being given to stopping money exchanging, clean or dirty that the authorities seem to have forgotten the fact that BTC anonymity allows children and young people below the legal limit to gambling with near zero effort.  My kids are 7 now, but I bet in the next two years they will be sneaking Bitcoins from my wallet, lol.
hero member
Activity: 1050
Merit: 529
Student Coin
January 20, 2017, 12:09:36 AM
That's why bitcoin is being used and abused by those people and it was the preferred medium of payment in the deep web, they are really thanking bitcoin for making them anonymous. Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities still those people manage to do something for it.

i want to bring attention to this line of the quote.

Quote
Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities

even these sites can automate checks on new deposit addresses for their origin.  this is the state that dirty coins start off at.  you have to put so much distance and tx confusion between that moment and the moment you change to fiat that no one will have a clue
The only solution to this is to comply with the law of your respective country, you can launder your money but that does not mean you will not be caught in the future. Remember that bitcoin is good for tracing transactions due to its public ledger.

Normally, for some countries gambling is illegal but I don't think that is a serious offense than selling illegal drugs or weapons and if you are just gambling, you are in the least priority.
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 503
January 19, 2017, 10:55:11 PM
That's why bitcoin is being used and abused by those people and it was the preferred medium of payment in the deep web, they are really thanking bitcoin for making them anonymous. Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities still those people manage to do something for it.

i want to bring attention to this line of the quote.

Quote
Even there are exchange sites that aren't allowing bitcoins that are coming from gambling or any illegal activities

even these sites can automate checks on new deposit addresses for their origin.  this is the state that dirty coins start off at.  you have to put so much distance and tx confusion between that moment and the moment you change to fiat that no one will have a clue
legendary
Activity: 3080
Merit: 1292
Hhampuz for Campaign management
January 19, 2017, 10:20:21 PM
yeah it can be launder. but it is easy to know if you got one. better be safe and have bitcoins on trusted suppliers. if you are suspicious about the traded bitcoin to yeah better check it. but there are alt coins that accepted as legal, we have the thread about the alt coins that can be converted to bitcoins. you can read to that thread about those alt coins.

It may be easy to know but there are people who manage to launder with bitcoins and keep on doing that with alt coins. There are some when their bitcoins came from something illegal, they are just using some mixers or just pass it with many wallets and buying alt coins in the same value of the bitcoins they have and sells it with bitcoin, so no trace at all.
Well, that's true, not all people doing criminal activities are being caught by the authorities, hence this are called a  perfect crime and only smart people can do this. However, don't expect one can enjoy it doing forever as no secret would last forever.
sr. member
Activity: 1540
Merit: 255
January 19, 2017, 10:11:50 PM
This is a serious problem that must be get solutions, do not ever think that bitcoin will be accepted many peoples or countries even if the presumption bitcoin is a great place for money laundering. Anonymous makes bitcoin as a paradise for money laundering. Let's find a solution together to stop this issued.

Not all people are doing it only few like who want convert their fiat currency into bitcoin. When they convert to bitcoin so there is no money for them to pay taxes, so to abound the taxes these people are converting fiat into bitcoin but any governments will get a solution for this very soon.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
January 19, 2017, 10:06:40 PM
yeah it can be launder. but it is easy to know if you got one. better be safe and have bitcoins on trusted suppliers. if you are suspicious about the traded bitcoin to yeah better check it. but there are alt coins that accepted as legal, we have the thread about the alt coins that can be converted to bitcoins. you can read to that thread about those alt coins.
hero member
Activity: 3052
Merit: 606
January 19, 2017, 10:00:25 PM
Obviously, this is rampant especially because people are doing it online and it is really hard to let them pay for this. If you are using an exchanger site then you are banned I must say that you are already doing the money laundering thingy

There is a difference between money laundering by using exchange and depositing bitcoin on an exchange from jobs. At this days where rich people who wants to money launder and use bitcoin exchange I think won't succeed easily. Exchanges are now clever and probably abiding the law. They are now asking for identification and most probably they might start to ask on what is your source to fund your account or wallet.
Actually They are doing it right now here in the Philippines there is a exchange service named coins.ph before you cash out the money you must first verify your identity like passing to them your personal ID and also forcely you have to take a SELFIE it also ask what source will I use to fund my wallet that's a big trouble if your money don't come in a legitimate way
Do they ask you where you money came from? I guess what they are doing is just to comply with the KYC policy, you will only be ask if you are making enormous money coming in to that exchange and most especially if you are under investigation. AMLC will notify a site regularly of the suspected and proven criminals so their account can be investigated, if you are not in the list, you will be fine.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
January 19, 2017, 08:58:25 PM
Obviously, this is rampant especially because people are doing it online and it is really hard to let them pay for this. If you are using an exchanger site then you are banned I must say that you are already doing the money laundering thingy

There is a difference between money laundering by using exchange and depositing bitcoin on an exchange from jobs. At this days where rich people who wants to money launder and use bitcoin exchange I think won't succeed easily. Exchanges are now clever and probably abiding the law. They are now asking for identification and most probably they might start to ask on what is your source to fund your account or wallet.
Actually They are doing it right now here in the Philippines there is a exchange service named coins.ph before you cash out the money you must first verify your identity like passing to them your personal ID and also forcely you have to take a SELFIE it also ask what source will I use to fund my wallet that's a big trouble if your money don't come in a legitimate way
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