How many bitcoin found. founders does it take to rob a bitcoin found. founder?

[gmaxwell]

According to coindesk a newly unsealed DHS investigation report (which I can't find) alleges that Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver laundered money for the hackers of MTgox (run by Bitcoin Foundation founder Mark Karpeles).

I found the coindesk article after seeing the indictment mention a 2012 "new york based bitcoin broker" and figuring out someone else probably made that connection and googling for the hackers name and Shrem.  If it's true we now have:

* Peter Vessenes   --  Stole $5 million dollars from MTGox by accepting deposits and not remitting funds, then tried to shake the insolvency down for billions alleging ludicrous contract breaches

* Roger Ver -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

* Charlie Shrem -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves


There were only six founding members!

Of course, there were red flags for anyone sensitive to them-- it's a big part of why many in the early community kept cautiously distant with the Bitcoin Foundation.  But those kinds of subtly are lost to history, because at the time they were more suspicions than allegations.

[Lucius]

This is definitely an interesting story and I have to admit that I didn't go so deep into what happened with Mt.Gox, but all of this that is stated in the article looks like the script of a crime movie. All of the above, the operation was managed by the Russians, and they were helped by greedy Americans such as Roger Ver and Charlie Shrem, and there is no shortage of corrupt FBI agents who wanted to grab some of the loot for themselves.

I hope that the investigation will produce some results and that those who have not yet been in prison will receive appropriate sentences, even though sleazebags like Reger Ver always somehow escape justice or get a minimum sentence.

[franky1]

According to coindesk a newly unsealed DHS investigation report (which I can't find)

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.600110/gov.uscourts.nysd.600110.3.0.pdf

it alleges that the hackers(BTC-E owner who hacked mtgox) under a "advertising contract" gave coins to bitinstant and asked them to convert it to fiat and pay out to X number of bank accounts, suggesting the bank accounts were related to advertising services but were actually bank accounts of the hackers.

bitinstant were to then give the hackers "credit"(mtgoxcodes/BTC-E codes for the exchanges internal reserve swap system which bitinstant managed). which allowed the hackers to then swap their "credit" with mtgox and then withdraw 300k bitcoin from mtgox.. without it triggering an accounting alert on mtgox side(thus went unseen)

it reads more of a bitinstant was duped into laundering rather then being in on the scam/theft/criminal act

its also worth noting that the authorities already raided bitinstant and grabbed al their records and documents years ago when they done the case against shrem for the silkroad deal that got him prison time. so if there was some "knowingly involvement" of the mtgox hack. they would have got hit for that too back in 2014

[348Judah]

The thing is that we that are new in the system have always worked by what we met on ground base on the research we make, maybe this recent activation of old time bitcoin being activated after a long inactive use of the wallets holding a reasonable amount of bitcoin in them could also have something to do with this early co-founders and also considering the past experience on scam accusations on of the highest order right from history, more things were getting unfolded and i believe more are still coming, thanks for this update.

[BenCodie]

The question now is how will this be treated? I know the arrest & warrants were just issued, and the evidence is concrete...though does this really mean justice is about to be served against the shitcoin cash creator or will this fly under the radar/will their power keep them away from consequence?

It does make it a lot more difficult due to the year of all of this occurring in comparison to when it's coming to light from a legal perspective...the settlement of Mt Gox and their individual statuses (especially Ver). Though that doesn't seem relevant after reading the filing. I'm curious to see how this plays out (whether they manage to evade justice or if they will serve, and how long if so)

[hd49728]

I was not an old member to know about Mt.Gox with my experience. Coindesk is a better quality website than Cointelegraph but not sure information in their article is all correct.

We can have more information about Mt. Gox from List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses.

Thank you gmaxwell. It's shameful that Roger Ver engage in another bad activity.

[Wind_FURY]

* Roger Ver -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

* Charlie Shrem -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

It would rather be easy to accept Charlie Shrem to be involved in something like money laundering because he already went to prison for it before, deservedly or not. But Roger Ver, I gave him the benefit of the doubt until I read the part that said his company, Memory Dealers, wired $2,500,000 to a shell company registered to a person involved with BTC-e. Who wires $2,500,000 to a shell company?

The people who had doubts about Roger Ver because he got caught selling fireworks through the U.S. Postal Service were right.

[DaveF]

... Who wires $2,500,000 to a shell company?...

Usually people committing tax fraud.
If they were moving stolen money wires are easy to trace.
If they were laundering money wires are easy to trace.
There are much easier / simpler / out of view ways to move $2.5 million then a very easy to follow / trace wire.

But, we don't know how smart they really are when it comes to finances and moving money.

-Dave

[odolvlobo]

According to coindesk a newly unsealed DHS investigation report (which I can't find) alleges that Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver laundered money for the hackers of MTgox (run by Bitcoin Foundation founder Mark Karpeles).

A link at the end of the article shows a report (Exhibit H) stating that Roger Ver and Charlie Shrem wired $2.5 million to the bank account of a company named Canton Business Corp. It does not state that they were aware that they were laundering money, though it does state that the wire notes contained "Internet Advertising Agreement" when no such agreement was apparent.

It would rather be easy to accept Charlie Shrem to be involved in something like money laundering because he already went to prison for it before, deservedly or not. But Roger Ver, I gave him the benefit of the doubt until I read the part that said his company, Memory Dealers, wired $2,500,000 to a shell company registered to a person involved with BTC-e. Who wires $2,500,000 to a shell company?

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Both have demonstrated other acts of incompetence, for which Charlie went to prison and Roger has never been forgiven, so I'll chalk this up to incompetence.

[Emitdama]

I am not 100% sure how true this is, but I do not really need another reason to dislike Roger Ver anyway, it is obvious that he has been a terrible person to be in the bitcoin world from the whole bitcoin cash fiasco, that was enough to dislike him, dude wanted to get himself and his friends richer without caring what it would do to bitcoin world, personal glory over general success. He is like a general willing to lose the war just to win his own fight, and that is why he would never be respected in the bitcoin space.

Imagine being founding member and then doing stuff so terrible that you would not even be respected by the very thing you helped founding. This is why I don't know if laundry part is true, but I am sure it is not that important.

[gmaxwell]

It's easy for people to make themselves vulnerable through being a contrarian, or at least the wrong kind of one.

If an evil authoritarian tells you not to do something, maybe it's just because they're an evil authoritarian or maybe its actually bad-- causes harm, puts people at risk, etc. Doing something *because* it's against the rules is just another way of being controlled by someone else.  And when the evil authoritarian isn't perfectly evil but is sometimes good, then you're potentially just doing bad stuff and trying to sound righteous about it.

Even where the evil authoritarian outlaws something with a lot of legitimate use, you've got a real risk that the people you help flaunting the law are often not the noble parties you'd like to imagine you're helping.  Apply some big profit motive blinders to that and it's a real formula for trouble.

Some money laundering rule might be said to be an outrageous abridgement of your freedom to speak and associate, your freedom to let be, to be secure against searches of your person and effects.  That may well be, but that doesn't change the fact that the specific guy in front of you asking you to help him break the rules and offering you a 10% commission on a $10m trade is probably running arms for terrorists or something.  Grandmas contraband unpasturized whole-cow milk might deserve to get traded, but chances are that some big shady deal isn't that.

We don't know the story, not really even part of it (FWIW, I asked coindesk to provide the source docs, glad they put them up. looks like there is probably more in pacer if someone wants to go recap)-- but I think more likely they wouldn't have been involved in that sort of trouble of they adopted the practice of asking themselves "Whats the worst that could happen?".

And for those of us who saw the composition of the monkeys in that circus and said "no thanks", it's perhaps a little more confirmation that the costs and trouble of keeping distant really was worth something.

[Wind_FURY]

... Who wires $2,500,000 to a shell company?...

Usually people committing tax fraud.
If they were moving stolen money wires are easy to trace.
If they were laundering money wires are easy to trace.
There are much easier / simpler / out of view ways to move $2.5 million then a very easy to follow / trace wire.

But, we don't know how smart they really are when it comes to finances and moving money.

-Dave

Or someone who received about $2,500,000 in Bitcoins?

 

They probably thought listing the wire transfer as merely an "Internet Advertisement Agreement" would be enough for law enforcement to believe that everything about the transaction is "OK". Are they that stupid? I don't know, but one of them did sell fireworks through the mail.

It would rather be easy to accept Charlie Shrem to be involved in something like money laundering because he already went to prison for it before, deservedly or not. But Roger Ver, I gave him the benefit of the doubt until I read the part that said his company, Memory Dealers, wired $2,500,000 to a shell company registered to a person involved with BTC-e. Who wires $2,500,000 to a shell company?

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Both have demonstrated other acts of incompetence, for which Charlie went to prison and Roger has never been forgiven, so I'll chalk this up to incompetence.

He incomptently assisted in money laundering. 👍

[Fivestar4everMVP]

I am not 100% sure how true this is, but I do not really need another reason to dislike Roger Ver anyway, it is obvious that he has been a terrible person to be in the bitcoin world from the whole bitcoin cash fiasco, that was enough to dislike him, dude wanted to get himself and his friends richer without caring what it would do to bitcoin world, personal glory over general success. He is like a general willing to lose the war just to win his own fight, and that is why he would never be respected in the bitcoin space.

Imagine being founding member and then doing stuff so terrible that you would not even be respected by the very thing you helped founding. This is why I don't know if laundry part is true, but I am sure it is not that important.

Well said my friend, Roger ver is clearly an example of what desperation for wealth and affluence does to a man, he is totally blind to the happenings around him, and most being the consequences of his actions, he does not care what or who gets hurt, all he gives attention to is his desperation of wealth, as like him, most believe that wealth gives power, but forget that being wealthy while no body likes you is also another pain altogether..

[buwaytress]

* Roger Ver -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

* Charlie Shrem -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

It would rather be easy to accept Charlie Shrem to be involved in something like money laundering because he already went to prison for it before, deservedly or not. But Roger Ver, I gave him the benefit of the doubt until I read the part that said his company, Memory Dealers, wired $2,500,000 to a shell company registered to a person involved with BTC-e. Who wires $2,500,000 to a shell company?

The people who had doubts about Roger Ver because he got caught selling fireworks through the U.S. Postal Service were right.

Shrem yeah, but I hold judgment anyway. Ver was known to recommend MtGox though, even though he did admit later on that he regretted doing that, alleging that he also lost funds there -- I can't find the posts but I remember reading them. So it's plausible he had to be personally connected to have been handling the wealth he did and needing and exchange to liquidate. Whether that also makes it plausible for him to be involved directly, can't say.

But if MD did wire that much money to a shell company, well, to answer "who wires 2.5M to a shell company", usually, people who know what they're doing with a lot of money. But odolvlobo is right. Not attributable to criminal intent. Likely incompetence.

*Not defending Ver at all.

[Zlantann]

There were only six founding members!

Of course, there were red flags for anyone sensitive to them-- it's a big part of why many in the early community kept cautiously distant with the Bitcoin Foundation.  But those kinds of subtly are lost to history, because at the time they were more suspicions than allegations.

It is bad to know that this kind of negative news is coming from people we should look up to. This is an indication that you don't trust anybody. A comprehensive investigation should be carried out and let those found guilty face the consequences. I don't know why the American companies that facilitated the liquidation of the stolen Bitcoin were not mentioned. They should also be exposed and persecuted. I am sure these founding members (if the allegations were true) were not content with what they had and wanted to make more money without considering the consequences of their actions on the Bitcoin ecosystem. They fail to understand that their actions and inaction affect the reputation of this sector indirectly.

[Blitzboy]

Quite the shocker. Respected Bitcoin Foundation figures accused of money laundering. "Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked." Ain't that the truth? Our role models, Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver, caught in such mess. Unbelievable, right? Yet, when cash is king, surprises abound. And Peter Vessenes, five million bucks embezzled, just like that Looking back, signals were there — red alerts we overlooked. Isnt it always so? Predicting a storm post-tempest is easier

The community's weathered storms before, this is no exception. Bitcoin embodies decentralization, not individuals, however influential

[SamReomo]

* Peter Vessenes   --  Stole $5 million dollars from MTGox by accepting deposits and not remitting funds, then tried to shake the insolvency down for billions alleging ludicrous contract breaches

That's the worst thing to hear because such a prominent member of the Bitcoin foundation has done that act. If a co-founder can do such a thing then other members can do that as well. His contribution for Bitcoin and its promotion is truly appreciated, but his sinister act of his company CoinLab's converting of $5 million dollar from the deposits of user funds shows that the guy wasn't truly a Bitcoin enthusiast.

* Roger Ver -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

That guy is expected to do such things because he did his best to promote so-called BCH which proves the mindset of the guy. He has already spent sometime in prison for his past crimes like selling of fireworks on Ebay even long before the existence of Bitcoin. I feel strange that how the guy remained the CEO of bitcoin.com for so long. The guy is truly an evil genius and he knows the tricks to manipulate others. I hope that soon authorities will take action against his supporting of money laundering for the Mtgox thieves.

* Charlie Shrem -- According to the DHS laundered money for the mtgox thieves

The guy has also remained in prison for 2 years because of "Silk Road marketplace" case because of transmitting unlicensed money related issues. Although, all of them have been prominent members of Bitcoin foundation and all of them were somehow involved in the criminal activities in the Mtgox exchange case. I hope that the authorities may get enough evidence to take proper action against those culprits of the crime.