Follow the Bitcoins taken from me by Homeland Security

[BurtW]

also this
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/bitcoin-is-officially-a-commodity-according-to-u-s-regulator

That is a very interesting article with far reaching consequences across the board.  So now the IRS and the CFTC are in agreement.  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

[BitUsher]

In the Florida case the cops set up Michael Espinoza. No one set out with the express intention to sell coins for purchasing stolen credit card numbers. Come on man don't be an idiot and trust every single thing NBC fucking news says. The media has an agenda and it's to sensationalize everything for ratings, not tell the truth.

Watch this interview with the man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acnxOEp3Mzk

Watch from 16:20 - 17:30. The lawyer admits that the "victim" was informed that the BTC would be used to purchase stolen credit cards. He should only have met in public to sell the BTC for his own security and he should never have sold the BTC once he realized it would be used for stolen credit cards. He should have immediately walked away. If he was scared for his life because he met in a private hotel (dumb) than he should have made some excuse that he needed to run down to his car to get the hardware/paper/yubikey to complete the transaction allowing him to flee the situation. Whether or not he intended originally to help purchase the cards doesn't justify that he still made the poor choice of going through with the transaction afterwards.

I don't care if you are a libertarian or anarchist... assisting people acquire stolen property is unethical. This being said I also consider that Homeland Security committed theft against Burt regardless of what laws they hide behind to justify their actions.

[Kprawn]

What control do you have over people who wants to buy ANYTHING from you to commit a crime? So you sell your car and someone use that car to commit a crime, and you

get charged for selling the car? It's ridiculously stupid to charge someone for that. It's a whole other story, if they can prove that you knowingly sold that asset {digital or not}

to assist someone to do a crime. I still say, they wanted to make a statement with his arrest, and they succeeded in doing that.   

[BitUsher]

What control do you have over people who wants to buy ANYTHING from you to commit a crime? So you sell your car and someone use that car to commit a crime, and you

get charged for selling the car? It's ridiculously stupid to charge someone for that. It's a whole other story, if they can prove that you knowingly sold that asset {digital or not}

to assist someone to do a crime. I still say, they wanted to make a statement with his arrest, and they succeeded in doing that.   

Why are you conflating the two when they are clearly distinct? There is a world of difference between knowingly assisting someone to acquire stolen property and exchanging funds without knowing. The end results may be the same but you are not culpable for that crime.

Firstly , if you are selling  BTC and the buyer unnecessarily gives up information that could make you liable for participating in a crime they are either undercover or an idiot(in which case they are sloppy and likely to implicate you by accident). Either way you shouldn't deal with these clients as they are extremely dangerous regardless of how you feel about the ethics in assisting people buy stolen credit cards.

Personally , I think its good advice to simply be more ethical and avoid people of questionable behavior altogether because:

1) They may implicate you by association in their lies/crimes
2) There low character will make it more probably they will cheat or scam you in the future
3) Many grifts are predicated on involving the victim in a crime
4) We should ostracize scumbags to not incentivize this behavior

Stay away from murderers, thieves, liars, and police in general and you will be much safer.

[Hugroll]

lol at the public note spam on their address 

[ElectricMucus]

Dude the business model was essentially providing money laundering services to dark net merchants and credit card scammers. You know in regards to financial services you don't have to be proven to be associated with illegal activity to have you assets seized, it's because there are regulations.

So it was his job to verify the source of the money? I thought it's police job to catch them. What if I steal 1k$ from you and I go to exchange them into another currency? Does this mean that the exchanger is providing me money laundering services and that they should get arrested? Sounds very illogical.

In a sense it is, not in that exact words and there is some leeway in terms of making the required effort reasonable. For most people that's not complicated to understand even if they can't understand the law text in written form but in common sense.
I don't expect that of you, any bitcoiner or any "free market" capitalist for that matter: So YES, you are responsible to verify the source of the money. And since you'll probably get red faced about it: Yes it's not the same thing as due process, and it's still the law and there is nothing you can do about it. Sweet, libertarian tears!

[TheButterZone]

Presume guilt until proven innocence, oops that proof of innocence wasn't, guilty no matter what!

[ElectricMucus]

Presume guilt until proven innocence, oops that proof of innocence wasn't, guilty no matter what!

You don't get that it's against the law not to report certain kind of financial transactions on it's own. The intent of the transaction is irrelevant, and you get due process for that!
You ask: So what kind of financial transactions do you have to report? Well you should figure that out before making a business out of it.
Some people call that tyranny, some call it compromise.
I laugh.

[unamis76]

I'm very curious about where these coins are going... Is it possible for them to be auctioned like the ones from the Silk Road case? Do the same principals apply? (both cases are very different).

[knowhow]

Im pretty sure only USA has soo fucking killing rules to everything that they wanna you to do ,that you can do ,can i walk? can i dream? For any here makes no sense government takes such ammount just because he sold btc and hasnt a license for it,soo how did they find he trading btc ,the money in and out were too much ... soo you risked too much you should had opened a license and wont would lost those all btc.

[RoadStress]

Hahaha, someone got clever with the vanity addresses

Will you spam their address so that they can't move the coins?

[akaman]

also this
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/bitcoin-is-officially-a-commodity-according-to-u-s-regulator

Every branch is saying they can regulate Bitcoin even if it conflicts with another branch. FINCEN says it's currency so they can regulate it, IRS says they can charge capital gains tax, and now CFTC says its a commodity and subject to them. Bitcoin is not a future in any way shape or form so this latest example is absurd. CFTC is solely for futures and option markets.

Bitcoiners need to start standing up against this bullshit or we will have a dozen financial branches regulating us at once.

Bitcoiners need to realize that transacting on a transparent blockchain is dumb, and migrate to true private and anonymous cryptocurrency. Pick your favorite. I prefer Monero.

[Kprawn]

What control do you have over people who wants to buy ANYTHING from you to commit a crime? So you sell your car and someone use that car to commit a crime, and you

get charged for selling the car? It's ridiculously stupid to charge someone for that. It's a whole other story, if they can prove that you knowingly sold that asset {digital or not}

to assist someone to do a crime. I still say, they wanted to make a statement with his arrest, and they succeeded in doing that.   

Why are you conflating the two when they are clearly distinct? There is a world of difference between knowingly assisting someone to acquire stolen property and exchanging funds without knowing. The end results may be the same but you are not culpable for that crime.

Firstly , if you are selling  BTC and the buyer unnecessarily gives up information that could make you liable for participating in a crime they are either undercover or an idiot(in which case they are sloppy and likely to implicate you by accident). Either way you shouldn't deal with these clients as they are extremely dangerous regardless of how you feel about the ethics in assisting people buy stolen credit cards.

Personally , I think its good advice to simply be more ethical and avoid people of questionable behavior altogether because:

1) They may implicate you by association in their lies/crimes
2) There low character will make it more probably they will cheat or scam you in the future
3) Many grifts are predicated on involving the victim in a crime
4) We should ostracize scumbags to not incentivize this behavior

Stay away from murderers, thieves, liars, and police in general and you will be much safer.

For me the two things are exactly the same. Burt sold Bitcoin to people, with no prior knowledge on what the user wants to use the Bitcoins for. How can anyone prove that

he knew that the Bitcoin will be used for criminal intent?

I do not see people walking around with T-shirts saying " I am a thief " or " I am a Liar " .... He just dealt with people and he sold a token that could be used for anything. 

[tsoPANos]

For me the two things are exactly the same. Burt sold Bitcoin to people, with no prior knowledge on what the user wants to use the Bitcoins for. How can anyone prove that

he knew that the Bitcoin will be used for criminal intent?

I do not see people walking around with T-shirts saying " I am a thief " or " I am a Liar " .... He just dealt with people and he sold a token that could be used for anything. 

This.
You will never be sure about with whom you deal with.
It looks like police is just trying to make some extra money by seizing campaigns.

[NorrisK]

Hahaha, someone got clever with the vanity addresses

The public comments are a bit too much imo... If they manage to trace him he will be In Big big trouble...

[stingers]

Hahaha, someone got clever with the vanity addresses

https://i.gyazo.com/515730adef4afcd8a7566013f1bdf6c3.png

Sorry Burt for your loss.
And lmao, from where did preet bharara and his ugly wife come into the scene?

Also,what will happen to these coins? Will the also get auctioned like the silkroad one's?

[BitUsher]

For me the two things are exactly the same. Burt sold Bitcoin to people, with no prior knowledge on what the user wants to use the Bitcoins for. How can anyone prove that

he knew that the Bitcoin will be used for criminal intent?

I do not see people walking around with T-shirts saying " I am a thief " or " I am a Liar " .... He just dealt with people and he sold a token that could be used for anything.  

It is rather simple. Michael Espinoza knew the bitcoins were going to be used for criminal intent because the seller told him, recorded him hearing and responding to this information, and Michael Espinoza and his lawyer even admit to being told that the btc was going to be used for criminal intent.

Now in this case the buyers were lying about what type of criminal activities the btc was being bought for... as they never intended to purchase stolen credit cards but were still buying for the criminal activity of stealing Espinoza's money.  

Either way you can avoid all this nonsense by not doing business with unethical individuals whether they are police or credit card thieves.

[FloridaBear]

For me the two things are exactly the same. Burt sold Bitcoin to people, with no prior knowledge on what the user wants to use the Bitcoins for. How can anyone prove that

he knew that the Bitcoin will be used for criminal intent?

I do not see people walking around with T-shirts saying " I am a thief " or " I am a Liar " .... He just dealt with people and he sold a token that could be used for anything.  

It is rather simple. Michael Espinoza knew the bitcoins were going to be used for criminal intent because the seller told him, recorded him hearing and responding to this information, and Michael Espinoza and his lawyer even admit to being told that the btc was going to be used for criminal intent.

Now in this case the buyers were lying about what type of criminal activities the btc was being bought for... as they never intended to purchase stolen credit cards but were still buying for the criminal activity of stealing Espinoza's money.  

Either way you can avoid all this nonsense by not doing business with unethical individuals whether they are police or credit card thieves.

If the CFTC says that Bitcoin is a commodity (and hence personal property like gold), there should be no discussion of money laundering, as it is not an exchange of money in the first place. The analogy his lawyer gives of selling a car is a good example: If a guy shows up with cash to buy your car and says "I'm planning to rob a bank with this baby," do you have a legal obligation to not sell it?

[Triple]

Hahaha, someone got clever with the vanity addresses

The public comments are a bit too much imo... If they manage to trace him he will be In Big big trouble...

All in good fun IMO. They can't charge him just because he says things like that. Unless it can be proven, he can't get in any form of trouble.

[hodedowe]

You're forgetting that EVERYONE breaks at least 2 laws every day. All they need is a reason to look at you and they've got you.
Regulation nation, my friend.