Bitcoin Exchange CEO Charlie Shrem Arrested On Money Laundering Charge

An anonymous reader writes "Charlie Shrem, the chief executive officer of bitcoin exchange BitInstant, has been arrested and charged with money laundering. 'In the federal criminal complaint, the Southern District of New York charges Shrem, the 24-year-old CEO of BitInstant, with three counts, including one count operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count willful failure to file suspicious activity report. Robert Faiella, a Silk Road user who operated under the name “BTCKing,” was charged with one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and one count money laundering conspiracy.'"

Comments

HSBC

[The Atog Lord]

I'm sure that the HSBC executives will also be arrested for their money laundering soon. Any time now.

Re:HSBC

[lgw]

You were sarcastic, but that is the whole freaking point of the rule of law: a list of rules such that, if you follow those rules, you won't be arrested. It makes for a far better society than one where you can be arrested whenever you annoy someone important, regardless of the rules.

Re:HSBC

[viperidaenz]

You are under arrest on suspicion of treason!
What did I do that amounts to treason?
What ever the king decides!

Re:HSBC

[pla]

"Sorry, matter of national security. No, you can't see the evidence against you. No, we don't have to physically present you to the court to stand trial".

And if you disagree with that... Better stay out of sight of the sky 24/7 or we might spot you "associating" with a terrorist leader and you know how that collateral drone damage works on you and your whole village... Er, neighborhood.

Re:HSBC

[Dahamma]

Stop trying to pretend this is a used car deal ("don't worry about the total, it's just $179 a month!"), let's just put the actual numbers out there - they were fined $1.9B for laundering $680B. The government isn't punishing them by "taking their future profits", it's giving them a massive break by forcing them to give up a small fraction of the profits they already made on illegal activities.

If you were fined 5 weeks of income (and no jail time) after having made a shit-ton of money in the last 4 years doing something illegal, it wouldn't sting at all. In fact, you'd almost be motivated to try it again...

Re:Money Laundering?

[JDG1980]

What you need to understand is very simple: financial privacy is illegal in the United States. If you run a bank, or any other form of money-transmission service, then you are legally required to report all transactions over a certain amount (I think it might be $10,000, but I'm not sure) to the U.S. government. You are also required to obtain and keep personally-identifiable information on all of your customers, and to report if someone is "structuring" transactions to get in under the limit.

If you don't do these things, you can get arrested even if you knew nothing about the illegal activity your customers were involved in.

Re:Tin foil hat time

[lgw]

You completely bypassed the point I was making.

The money supply has almost nothing to do with the amount of physical currency, because of fractional-reserve banking (and other games without handy names). Do you think inflation in America has anything to do with the umber of printed dollar bills in circulation?

For bitcoin to be mainstream, used by ordinary people for shopping, there will need to be BTC-denominated savings accounts, CDs, and credit cards (and likely insurance policies as well). In other words: fractional-reserve banking.