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Bitcoins Seized In Drug Bust
First time accepted submitter Salo2112 writes "In a case believed to be the first of its kind, federal authorities have seized a Charleston man's virtual currency due to an alleged drug law violation with possible links to a shadowy online black market. From the article: 'The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently posted a forfeiture notice indicating that agents had seized 11.02 Bitcoins worth $814 from 31-year-old Eric Daniel Hughes for allegedly violating the federal Controlled Substances Act. No other details were provided.'"
I'm surprised it took so long.
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Why is every minutiae associated with Bitcoin posted on the front page here?
This is not news for nerds. Criminals will always look for ways to hide money, whether it is in hard cash, diamonds, or even bitcoin it is not new.
Stop this nonsense now.
Can we at least make sure stuff is adequately summarized before it hits the front page?
As already said, you must be new here.
For the record, it was in South Carolina.
Umm, what the heck? When a name like "Charleston" is just given without any other qualifier, it's obviously referencing the most well-known city with that name, i.e., the one in South Carolina.
Given that the "U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration" is explicitly mentioned, the summary automatically rules out your localities in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK, so listing those as possible interpretations of the summary is ridiculous and ignorant.
And while, yes, there is possibly one other well-known Charleston on your list (the capital of West Virginia), the rest of the members on your list of U.S. cities are not generally known widely enough that they would be recognized by a wider audience without qualification.
I'm not from the South, nor have I lived most of my life in the southern U.S., but if I said the name "Charleston" to just about anyone I know, without further qualification, they would assume I'm talking about Charleston, SC (unless context suggested otherwise).
When someone says "New York" in an article, you don't assume they are talking about New York in Linconshire in the UK, nor do they think you might be talking about New York, Kentucky or New York, Texas. Similarly, a story about "Los Angeles" shouldn't leave the reader befuddled about whether we're talking about Los Angeles, Texas, let alone the much more significant city of Los Angeles in Chile. If you're from West Virginia, I can understand being a little irked that the South Carolinian Charleston is more famous, but just about all of the other Charleston locations you listed in the U.S. are pretty insignificant, with most of them having populations of a few hundred to a couple thousand. Heck, you even listed Charleston, Arizona and Charleston, Oklahoma, which are both freakin' ghost towns.
Next time, take two minutes and do some research by clicking the top link for "Charleston" in an internet search before pasting in an irrelevant list from Wikipedia that you didn't even bother to read.
As I comment this is at a -1.
I would say not wanting to pay someone to violate your rights while monitoring and punishing your activities is a perfectly reasonable answer.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The other issue is that seizure is without proceeding. If you don't declare your cash when traveling across borders, they'll presume it's illegal and seize it until you prove otherwise (and that's long and expensive). If you do declare it, they'll likely seize it as well, they'll just know how much and where to look.
There have been more than one case of a police officer (often chief or higher-up) that ordered a raid of a house, no drugs found, house still seized, then used as an undercover or safe house that made it functionally that officer's house. When you give financial incentive to bad behavior, then the bad behavior is encouraged, even if that wasn't the goal.
There are simple fixes, but the governments don't ever agree to them. They like the for-profit seizures and tickets. The agency issuing fines (or seizures) shouldn't be the agency keeping the money. When you separate the money, you'll change the behavior. No matter how many speeding tickets the town issues, there will be no income from it. You'd see the speed traps decrease, and a greater focus on safety, rather than revenue. Make percentage-take camera systems illegal (where the company running the cameras gets a portion of the revenue). There are documented cases where they shortened yellow lights to catch more people, decreasing safety to get more revenue.
Money is causing corruption, so remove the money from the equation.
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