Topic: Reminder: you can and should abort in-person currency trades at any time - page 2. (Read 5630 times)

No, I was going to sell coins for CHF, not buy them. The amount in question was 100 CHF, which is about the same in dollars. It's not enough to do much of anything.

The fact that a supposed drug seller was wanting to acquire Bitcoins is one of the inconsistencies I mentioned. Presumably the problem people like that would have is selling Bitcoins for fiat.

When you're the press trying to make a show, the more egregious the question you can get your mark to bite on, the better the show!  Have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVRv5u36Huw

Interviewer Q. "We have chosen your baby to be dressed as a Nazi officer, pushing a wheelbarrow with another baby playing a Jew, into an oven.  How do you feel?"

Mother A. "If he got the part, well, then, that's great!" (paraphrased)

Selling bitcoins is no problem, but buying them could be.

The OP was trying to buy bitcoins from someone who had earned them from the drug trade. Buying those bitcoins for USD, EUR etc, is technically "laundering" the proceeds of crime.

Even if there's not a legal liability, there'd definitely be a liability in the court of public opinion.

Selling duct tape is not illegal, but if someone went to Home Depot and made a covert video of a clerk cheerfully selling duct tape to a guy who is asking what's the best brand to bind and gag children, or asking to cut a pipe into six-inch segments "for some pipe bombs" or something, it's going to look bad on the six o'clock news and in a courtroom no matter what, even if the clerk has no authority or discretion to refuse to sell the product.  And that's without assuming that something bad happens later in the public eye (abduction/murder/bombing/whatever).

Needless to say, "here's your bitcoins, hope your transaction goes well" (after learning it's for drugs) would make for a sound bite that wouldn't reflect well on us.

If not government entrapment, it could just as easily be a member of the press looking for some salacious content for their story.  Look around, the cameraman may be in the bushes, or that thick pen in their shirt pocket may be a hidden cam.

So, you met with a cop who was trying to entrap you...
I guess Switzerland is not the free country they try to make us believe they are

I'm not going to interrogate whoever is selling me bitcoins but if they came right out and said it was from drugs I'd walk away too that screams fed entrapment.

Did he know your identity ahead of time?

I definitely agree - if you exchange money or any kind of goods/services, and the customer mentions illegal activity, it is wisest to withdraw from the business right away. For your own protection.

You are way too visible and important to the community to be doing this sort of thing in my opinion.

I've studied financial regulations in a lot of depth. I think in person trading is quite safe as long as you don't do large trades and apply basic common sense, like refusing to trade with people who tell you they are planning to break the law.

AML regulations, at least in sane countries, have thresholds on them. For trading 50 CHF here, 100 CHF there the volumes are too low to be of any utility to actual criminals and are thus excluded. I do this only to help bring the Bitcoin community in Switzerland together, it's not a real business (makes no profit for me). So there's no reason to ever go anywhere near those thresholds. If the amount of trading people wanted to do were to step up I'd just point them to Mt Gox. I trust the Swiss government to be reasonable about this stuff. If I see any signs they aren't going to be then I'd stop.

I don't think he was intoxicated.  We didn't discuss the details of what he did. I just let him talk, he didn't need any encouragement. He asked me what the largest cash-out trade I knew of was, which struck me as an odd question, so I told him to ask Mt Gox.

Frankly I got the impression he had memorized a list of buzzwords. At one point he referred to IR codes, which seems like a pretty odd mistake for somebody who claimed to have a long technical career and a "business" that used Bitcoin.

MH, someone like you, with such high visibility and so much to lose, should probably confine your trading to exchanges.

It sounds sketchy and I'm sorry you had that experience. It would be better if local bitcoins had some sort of feedback system.
I think it is more likely that he behaved erratically because he was intoxicated than that he was an investigator.

I am curious, did he mention whether he received the drugs directly, or did he have them 'drop-shipped' to customers?

I wouldn't really ask any questions, it's their business what they want them for or where they got them from..

But I'd definitely abort once info like that or something actually bad(like I want to buy a bomb to blow up a bank) has been voluntarily provided if only because there's a real chance I just walked into a LEO trap trying to get me implicated with a "crime" and then attack me.

If you buy or sell Bitcoins in your local city via a service like localbitcoins.com it's worth remembering that you are not under any obligation to complete the trade. You can abort it for any reason, or no reason at all, and for the health of the Bitcoin community you should do so if your counterparty comes across as problematic.

It's worth asking your counterparty a few questions about what they're planning on doing with the Bitcoins (if buying) or how they got them (if selling). Of course they are under no obligation to tell you, but I've found most legitimate people are quite happy to discuss their new hobby, get new ideas, discuss places to use their new Bitcoins etc.

Today I met up for an in person trade and I aborted it. The reason is that the guy almost immediately told me he was a drug dealer and used Bitcoin to sell drugs into the USA from Europe. This was based on almost no prompting at all, he just came out with it. In fact he was very talkative for a self-confessed criminal who just met a total stranger and said many things that simply did not add up, or which contradicted each other. Even if I was the type to do currency trades with drug dealers (I'm not), I was left with the distinct impression that he might not be a real dealer at all but rather some kind of investigator.

After he finished talking, I politely told him I couldn't really trade with him after hearing all that. He was quite nice about it and then simply got up and left.