One possibility...
I know from firsthand experience, having registered a company with Fincen, that
the individual that is listed with Fincen as the AML compliance officer is 100% responsible for reporting
any suspicious activity and can be prosecuted for not flagging
one bad actor that is later caught by the feds. This would explain why only Charlie is being prosecuted and none of the other executives at Bitinstant. Because let's face it, at a small company it would be really difficult to keep the other executives from knowing that this was going on.
Also, the feds probably stole all of Shrems remaining bitcoin and transferred it to their personal wallets while smoking the rest of Shrems herbs
I'm generally withholding comment on this whole affair for obvious reasons (and the lawyers will probably kill me for this post), but allow me to say this:
No, nobody else in the company knew about Charlie going back to this guy in private, myself included (read the complaint - i'm "the co-founder", read what I said).
I've always liked Charlie as a friend and a colleague and don't want to see him in prison - he does not deserve that at all (after all, there are literally no victims here other than those created by state intervention) - but neither am I happy to let people speculate that the rest of the company was "in on it".
If anything I personally felt a bit betrayed reading the complaint - if you read my emails to him as cited in the complaint I warned him that this whole mess smelled like money laundering and could lead to trouble. What you don't see in the complaint is my suggestions that we actively try to prevent ban evading through pattern analysis - of course it makes sense now why that didn't happen and I could not imagine that Charlie would cover for someone we should have been banning.
Charlie's a good man really, and it pains me to say anything bad about him because i've a lot of respect for him as a colleague and a friend, but I also have to make extremely clear that I myself was not aware of the extent of this particular issue.
A friend to all bitcoiners made a mistake, but it is his mistake alone.