Follow the Bitcoins taken from me by Homeland Security

[knowhow]

Well this US wanna control all,but bitcoin were designed to be decentralized,with these no one could track our trades soo why they had acess to your bitcoins did you had declared them or made some fortune selling and buying the bitcoins?

[isvicre]

tl;dr:  I was charged with operating a money transmittal business without a licence for my trading activity on localbitcoins.com. (profile) 

Did you received or sent FIAT from or to outside of the USA through bank transaction, cash or any other means ?

All of my localbitcoins.com transactions were cash in person trades at a local coffee shop.

Oops. That is highly risky. Anyone from any country using LBC must avoid cash transaction, because it does not leave a trail. And if you do not leave a trail, administration will naturally be suspicious about you. It works like this...

You probably sold 1 BTC against 200 USD and paid tax accordingly. But, if you do it in cash, administration has no other way than simply trusting you that you sold 1 BTC only. You may have sold 10 BTC against cash and reported 1 BTC. Authorities do not like this. Whenver you are changing BTC against FIAT, do it online. Keep a trail and show it if you are in trouble. I never heard anyone to be in trouble using LBC for online transactions only within the country.

But if he paid tax for them than what's the problem here? US laws are really weird. I know a lot of people do same things in Europe and don't even pay tax. They don't get in trouble, because there's no law about Bitcoin trading.

[kingscrown]

so burt wot happend exactly did they steal you bitcoins didnt u give some on reserve for yourself in cold storage tell me more

You can read all about it here:

www.burtw.com

www.jmwagner.com

and, of course, here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=934268.0

sick story

[coinzat]

What happened to you is so creepy :/
I wonder what will they do with your btc ? Will they store it only in this address or they will exchange it to dollars ?!?

[chopstick]

Fuck the police state. Civil asset forfeiture is legalized robbery. They can literally use any excuse they want to just come in and steal our shit. These pigs are greedy as fuck.

Bitcoin is great, but we need an alternative choice of society and government as well.

We're all still vulnerable living in this police state bullshit. And they will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. We need a new government. Our leaders have failed We the People.

[Hellot]

Something doesn't make sense.  If they made a mistake and dropped the charges, why did you have to pay them so much money?  

[chopstick]

Something doesn't make sense.  If they made a mistake and dropped the charges, why did you have to pay them so much money?  

He had to pay them an extortion fee to have the charges dropped. If he hadn't done that they would have dragged it out even longer and he would have had to keep paying more for his lawyer anyway.

It's the american dream baby. Be a LEO and steal money from hard working americans. If they resist, bankrupt them and stick em in solitary confinement and have em be in "contempt of court" to boot.

[belcher]

I would really like to see them take something that only i can unlock, since i don't keep any passwords or similar things written or stored.
They would need my consent in order to take bitcoins away from me, which i doubt i would ever do, even faced with larger losses. Thank god i don't live in USA tho

How did they take the Bitcoins?
Did they just tell you to send all of the Bitcoins to a specific address, or did they take your private keys?

I know nothing about other countries but here in the US they have this thing called "contempt of court" which is the second most odious part of the law, right behind civil asset forfeiture.

All the judge needs to do is say "give me the password to all of your Bitcoins or you will be in contempt of court".  If you do not then give them your Bitcoins you will be sent to jail.

Note that for the most part it is almost impossible to appeal "contempt of court"

Also, they can keep you in jail until you produce the password they want.  That means forever - there is no time limit.

So your passwords are only as secure as your willingness to go to jail to keep them secret.

What if you didn't give them all your bitcoins?

Since it's possible to use bitcoin privately and anonymously, you could own bitcoins they don't know about. When they demand passwords you only give up part of your holdings.

[BitUsher]

What if you didn't give them all your bitcoins.

Since it's possible to use bitcoin privately and anonymously, you could own bitcoins they don't know about. When they demand passwords you only give up part of your holdings.

They could imprison you forever if they even suspect you are with-holding passwords. This is also the reason why the probably made a lot of transactions shortly before the raid. They purchased a bulk of the coins than raided Burt's home to steal back their Fiat. Atrocious behavior.

The worst aspect of this is they only need to ruin a few peoples lives before they ultimately succeed in achieving their primary objective.... forcing everyone to use exchanges that follow KYC where they can monitor and shutdown accounts.

[TeamButtcoin]

Something doesn't make sense.  If they made a mistake and dropped the charges, why did you have to pay them so much money?  

He had to pay them an extortion fee to have the charges dropped. If he hadn't done that they would have dragged it out even longer and he would have had to keep paying more for his lawyer anyway.

It's the american dream baby. Be a LEO and steal money from hard working americans. If they resist, bankrupt them and stick em in solitary confinement and have em be in "contempt of court" to boot.

...or he isn't telling the whole story

[chopstick]

Something doesn't make sense.  If they made a mistake and dropped the charges, why did you have to pay them so much money?  

He had to pay them an extortion fee to have the charges dropped. If he hadn't done that they would have dragged it out even longer and he would have had to keep paying more for his lawyer anyway.

It's the american dream baby. Be a LEO and steal money from hard working americans. If they resist, bankrupt them and stick em in solitary confinement and have em be in "contempt of court" to boot.

...or he isn't telling the whole story

No. The agency that arrested him is 100% funded by civil asset forfeiture. They wanted his money and they weren't going to let go until they got it.

[akaman]

They could imprison you forever if they even suspect you are with-holding passwords. This is also the reason why the probably made a lot of transactions shortly before the raid. They purchased a bulk of the coins than raided Burt's home to steal back their Fiat. Atrocious behavior.

So, was this a classic LBC undercover sting where an agent posed as a buyer and purchased BTC from Burt, allegedly for buying drugs online or something like that?

[akaman]

No. The agency that arrested him is 100% funded by civil asset forfeiture.

Do you have a source for this claim?

[BitUsher]

So, was this a classic LBC undercover sting where an agent posed as a buyer and purchased BTC from Burt, allegedly for buying drugs online or something like that?

This was merely for selling BTC without permission. Nothing to do with drugs, or stolen cc , ect...

[ElectricMucus]

This was merely for selling BTC without permission. Nothing to do with drugs, or stolen cc , ect...

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.
I know, i know the law shouldn't be the law, but he still broke it.

Hell, remember how ripple was fined a cool $1mil because they failed to report a transaction they've participated in?

[ElectricMucus]

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

[RoadStress]

I can flood the wallet with spam transactions if you want?

Feel free to do it. You are not expecting Burt to confirm you that because he can get in trouble. Fire away!

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.

[mookid]

Such an abuse of power by the government. It's crazy to think that these guys would do everything in their power to chase
normal people.
No wonder half the world hates the US.

[BitUsher]

This was merely for selling BTC without permission. Nothing to do with drugs, or stolen cc , ect...

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.
I know, i know the law shouldn't be the law, but he still broke it.

Hell, remember how ripple was fined a cool $1mil because they failed to report a transaction they've participated in?

I am very familiar with their unethical justifications for stealing Burt's cash. I am just pointing out there is a large difference between  this case - http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Man-Pleads-Guilty-in-Miami-Dades-First-Bitcoin-Case-327888241.html  and Burt's. I don't have much sympathy for people knowingly selling bitcoins for the express purpose of purchasing stolen credit cards or murdering someone.

[chopstick]

This was merely for selling BTC without permission. Nothing to do with drugs, or stolen cc , ect...

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.
I know, i know the law shouldn't be the law, but he still broke it.

Hell, remember how ripple was fined a cool $1mil because they failed to report a transaction they've participated in?

I am very familiar with their unethical justifications for stealing Burt's cash. I am just pointing out there is a large difference between  this case - http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Man-Pleads-Guilty-in-Miami-Dades-First-Bitcoin-Case-327888241.html  and Burt's. I don't have much sympathy for people knowingly selling bitcoins for the express purpose of purchasing stolen credit cards or murdering someone.

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