Money laundering via BTC

[SvenBomvolen]

   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?

[morantis]

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.

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

[morantis]

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.

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

[chixka000]

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

[nicolecan13]

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.

[morantis]

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.

[Viscore]

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.

[morantis]

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

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

(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.

[anonbit992]

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.

[morantis]

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.

[bitkilo]

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.

You have got to be joking, a proper monitoring system for all online wallet transactions, why and monitored by who? The governments?

You can already see all transactions as they happen just by watching the blockchain but for a monitoring system to combat money laundering addresses would need to be linked to ID's and I can't see too many people wanting that.

Sorry but i don't think bitcoin is the right currency for you if you think this way.

[ImHash]

Actually bitcoin it self is cleaner than any currency, we don't have any dirty money only literally and people only need to launder money when they are not able to explain and provide a legal reason as to how they've got and obtained that money.
People trying to do it with bitcoin, not possible if miners refuse to sell or any coin holder refuses to sell but when you get your coins you are no longer need to be worried because just after a mix no government can link you to anything whatsoever.

[chixka000]

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.

Strongly agree, in fact there is this one certain thing that they could do especially in dealing with any transactions to the coinbase. We all know how strict coinbase in their KYC policy but still they find ways not to be convected.

 Good thing is that the US court is hearing any case about that certain issues. However here in the Philippines which is money laundering is rampant as well. Only those who got huge amounts was being penalized. So what other scamming scheme was made by part to be able to minimize there risk

[FLoving]

Until none of the government will approve bitcoin as a legal currency people can do and will do whatever will they want with their bitcoin money and as governments do not moderate that currency so it is not considered as money laundering if they are not doing moral illegal act with their money.

[deisik]

Until none of the government will approve bitcoin as a legal currency people can do and will do whatever will they want with their bitcoin money and as governments do not moderate that currency so it is not considered as money laundering if they are not doing moral illegal act with their money

As if cash would be somehow different in this respect

Even if governments accept Bitcoin as a currency (foreign or legal tender, it doesn't matter), what could that possibly change in regard to Bitcoin money laundering? How can they moderate Bitcoin in practice? I think Bitcoin allows even less moderation than hand-to-hand cash transfers. Are you going to force people install some government spyware on their computers or make the equipment manufacturers supply their hardware (say, motherboards and chips) with tainted firmware?



As an aside, the least thing that people care about when laundering their coins is morale

[Carlsen]

I think that money laundering is possible with nearly everything.
Cash, bitcoins, or any other good.
But sooner or later that money has to go back into a bank account.
I think that is the spot where governments should put their eye on.

[Wandering Soul~]

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.

You have got to be joking, a proper monitoring system for all online wallet transactions, why and monitored by who? The governments?

You can already see all transactions as they happen just by watching the blockchain but for a monitoring system to combat money laundering addresses would need to be linked to ID's and I can't see too many people wanting that.

Sorry but i don't think bitcoin is the right currency for you if you think this way.

Seems like he doesn't understand bitcoins nature yet . If you're a newbie you will theres one thing that you must do and that is to gather information and nurture them . We all have done that .

You can view all transactions made in a public ledger but tracking the owners of the said addresses is impossible and most users uses more than 5 so regulating it is hard . Thats one of the reasons why most states doesn't recognize bitcoin as a currency . Accept the fact that money Laundering will be easy on bitcoin but  even though don't  use it for that purpose .

[bitkilo]

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.

You have got to be joking, a proper monitoring system for all online wallet transactions, why and monitored by who? The governments?

You can already see all transactions as they happen just by watching the blockchain but for a monitoring system to combat money laundering addresses would need to be linked to ID's and I can't see too many people wanting that.

Sorry but i don't think bitcoin is the right currency for you if you think this way.

Seems like he doesn't understand bitcoins nature yet . If you're a newbie you will theres one thing that you must do and that is to gather information and nurture them . We all have done that .

You can view all transactions made in a public ledger but tracking the owners of the said addresses is impossible and most users uses more than 5 so regulating it is hard . Thats one of the reasons why most states doesn't recognize bitcoin as a currency . Accept the fact that money Laundering will be easy on bitcoin but  even though don't  use it for that purpose .

No i don't think he has quite grasped the concept and idea of bitcoin yet but hopefully he will, we were all new to this not long ago and most of us have had to spend a lot of time researching the info we needed and none of us will ever be finished because this industry is growing in new ways everyday.

[morantis]

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.

You have got to be joking, a proper monitoring system for all online wallet transactions, why and monitored by who? The governments?

You can already see all transactions as they happen just by watching the blockchain but for a monitoring system to combat money laundering addresses would need to be linked to ID's and I can't see too many people wanting that.

Sorry but i don't think bitcoin is the right currency for you if you think this way.

Seems like he doesn't understand bitcoins nature yet . If you're a newbie you will theres one thing that you must do and that is to gather information and nurture them . We all have done that .

You can view all transactions made in a public ledger but tracking the owners of the said addresses is impossible and most users uses more than 5 so regulating it is hard . Thats one of the reasons why most states doesn't recognize bitcoin as a currency . Accept the fact that money Laundering will be easy on bitcoin but  even though don't  use it for that purpose .

No i don't think he has quite grasped the concept and idea of bitcoin yet but hopefully he will, we were all new to this not long ago and most of us have had to spend a lot of time researching the info we needed and none of us will ever be finished because this industry is growing in new ways everyday.

if you think about it, there have been very few major additions or alterations to the code as far as new functions, and this is compared to other types of services and software suites that add new features by the handful year after year, and there is still a host of things that can be done with bitcoin that few have even touched. 

[EcoNorm]

ofcourse its possible, but thats not what btc is ment for like all the oldschool people think..