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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.'"
I'm sure that the HSBC executives will also be arrested for their money laundering soon. Any time now.
It's a competing currency. The marketplace says "we have no faith in your dollars." Government says "so?" The marketplace says "we will replace the dollar." Government says "no."
I just wonder how it took so long.
I recommend reading the full complaint before quickly firing off a reply comparing Shrem to HSBC. Shrem was deeply involved in avoiding AML controls.
Full complaint here:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/SchremFaiellaChargesPR/Faiella,%20Robert%20M.%20and%20Charlie%20Shrem%20Complaint.pdf
Maybe you missed the comment "If the price keeps going up, he could have a million dollars in that ring!â
If he doesn't even have a few 10s of millions of dollars, why would he have free speech? What country do you think he lives in? Seriously, when they said money is speech, they certainly didn't have anyone like him in mind.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Not really. he allegedly did some shady deals which he failed to report. So business as usual in financial circles except he got caught.
WINNI...
Nevermind.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Indeed.
When BofA and HSBC, etc. screw you over, they do it by the book.
The book they helped to write.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
The beginning of the end?
Well, if you accept the premise that bitcoin's value is predominantly in libertarian imagination of circumventing laws, it is, maybe.
Perhaps I just don't understand what "money laundering" means, but I don't really see how bit-coin is of any use whatsoever for money laundering.
Money-laundering, as I understand it, means to disguise the true origin of ill-gotten funds, so as to make the income appear legitimate.
I think there's confusion in the two different means of the word "disguise". In one sense, it means simply to hide or obscure. In another sense, it means to make something or someone appear to be something else.
Bank robbers wear a disguise in the first sense. A bank-robber doesn't wear a Richard Nixon mask because he wants people to think Richard Nixon robbed the bank. He just doesn't want to be identified in a line-up. This is the same kind of disguise that bit-coin offers. And even in that, it doesn't really stand up.
But I think people interested in money-laundering are using the other sense of the word: they want to be able to actually spend their ill-gotten gains without arousing suspicion. They need to make it look like legitimate income. That is why Walter White bought a car-wash.
Merely obscuring the true origin of your money is useless. If the government is even a tiny bit curious about the true origin of your money, you're already well and truly fucked, whether or not they can ever figure it out.
It's a competing currency. The marketplace says "we have no faith in your dollars.
Nonsense. The marketplace has mostly yawned and ignored bitcoin - and rightfully so. There is plenty of evidence that the market has lots of faith in dollars and very little in bitcoin.
The law, in its infinite wisdom, forbids both rich and poor alike from panhandling, digging through trashcans, and sleeping under bridges.
Equality under the law, fuck yeah!
This is about normal for Bitcoin exchanges. All of them are flaky. Most of them don't even have a legit business address. About half of all Bitcoin "exchanges" so far have failed. The problem is that they're not just exchanges, they're also deposit-taking institutions holding customer funds. With no regulation. A sizable number of Bitcoin "exchanges" just took the money and ran. With the arrest of the CEO, "bitinstant.com" dropped offline.
Right now, the formerly biggest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, in Tokyo, is tanking. They stopped US dollar withdrawals back in June 2013, then EUR withdrawals slowed down, then JPY withdrawals, and now Bitcoin withdrawals. There's much discussion over whether they're broke, crooked, or merely incompetent. Right now, Bitcoins on Mt. Gox are priced 25% higher than on the other exchanges, because if you sell Bitcoins on Mt. Gox, you can't get the money out, and that spread has been climbing rapidly for the last few days.
Irrevocable anonymous remote transactions are the scammer's dream. Scammers can rip people off without ever meeting the marks and with a low chance of getting caught. That's Bitcoin's big problem. It takes ten honest people to support one crook, and Bitcoin's ratio of crooks is much higher than that.
..has been proposed or enacted by the federal government on bitcoin.
The problem is that this marketplace doesn't want a competing currency, they want a way to electronically move money around "anonymously".
The government is saying no to sidestepping financial regulations and other laws. You're right about one thing. I seemed to take much longer than expected.
Bitcoin can not be stopped
Bitcoin doesn't have to be stopped. It just has to be ignored which is what most people are doing. For 99%+ of people out here in the real world, bitcoin does not solve any real world problems for them. Bitcoin does not allow me (or anyone I know) to do any transactions I currently do easier, cheaper, faster or safer. Most people who use it are either doing so for ideological reasons (hate the Fed, etc) or because they are looking to avoid legal scrutiny of their transactions (money laundering). It's probably of some minor interest to economic academics.
No, it isn't.
Free speech is the right to express any opinion. You do not get to break other laws in order to exercise your rights. Murder is not free speech. Racial discrimination is not free speech. Slander is not free speech.
In fact, the currently-held test for whether an expression is protected is whether it directly causes lawless action. If the expression is lawless in itself, that counts, too. What you can do, however, is write essays and stage legal protests announcing that you feel money laundering (and the anonymity it provides) should be legal. Of course, someone might take offense at your speech, and law enforcement might get suspicious and start looking more closely at your tax forms, but Congress can make no law abridging your ability to (lawfully) express that opinion.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It's a competing currency. The marketplace says "we have no faith in your dollars." Government says "so?" The marketplace says "we will replace the dollar." Government says "no."
I just wonder how it took so long.
There are a finite number of bit coins. You can only get more by getting them from other people. Let me guess - you're one of those gold standard people too, right? The dollar is in no danger of being replaced by bitcoin, as if such could ever happen. Shrem seems to have believed that he could act as an intermediary for transactions that he knew were in violation of US law and not be held responsible. He can test that assertion in a court of law. When bitcoin exchanges that don't have ties to Silk Road start get closed down on trumped up charges you might have a point, but right now your "evil government took them down because it feared them" hypothesis isn't strong.
Isn't money laundering just another form of anonymous speech and therefore a protected activity?
Only if you're a corporation.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Should have had Charlie Sheen as CEO. The business would've been running on tiger's blood!
Seriously, when they said money is speech, they certainly didn't have anyone like him in mind.
Holy Federal Reserve, Batman, if that's not one of the most damn insightful statements I've seen in some time...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
since bitcoin isn't a currency so much as it is a ledger where everything is tracked and traceable, it does not seem like the ideal venue for illegal transactions. The "paper trail" is going to be out there.
One article I recently read described Bitcoins as "prosecution futures". I think they might have been right.
GREED IS GREED and it will lead to a state of affairs that will make the dirty thirties look like good times. As long as economies can be effected by a few controlling a growing majority of the wealth then there will intentional economic down turns to lower wages. This time around because the obvious stampede of the rich to get their capital out of the economy of the US and Canada the ensuing depression will be catastrophic. Starvation for some is only a few pay checks away as it is and the majority of the population realizes this fact. Bitcoin is not the answer to this. Now we have the rich accusing the poor of being prejudiced against them and creating an economic holocaust for them by design when the truth is, it is their manipulation of the economy that is causing the chaos in the first place.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Death and taxes...
The banks were very upset by this insidious event because they like bitcoin a lot.
It has no real backing behind it, no metals, nothing of value, the only thing backing it is past tense, history, computation time.
What is to prevent CLONING (copying) bitcoins?
What we need is what Colnl Kadaffe was promising before they offed him too, A GOLD CURRENCY (MADE FROM GOLD NO LESS).
Or gems, or silver. something with real tangable value.None of this digital fake shit.
The banks were very upset by this insidious event because they like bitcoin a lot. Now the banks are worried because their money might also be laundered by the bad criminal elements.
Seriously, read the fucking complaint.
They were operating fine with "AML controls", and would be still operating fine - just like any other fucking Bitcoin service that is not shut down by "jackbooted thugs stomping on little man" and all despite boldly operating in Totally-Sticking-It-To-The-Man currency - but they didn't even try to pretend they didn't know they're dealing with Silkroad.
Yes, it's in there, with all the subpoenaed emails about how it's ok working with drug dealers, just tell them to keep it under reportable limit.
If they treat him the same as HSBC, he'll be OK. Slap a minor fine on him (5 weeks-worth of profit) and the government take their cut of the proceedings.
Now, the government wouldn't treat individuals charged with wrongdoing differently to multi-million/billion dollar businesses, would they?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I actually consider this a feature and not a bug.
Death and taxes...
Yep. If they suspect you should be taxed and aren't paying any taxes, they'll not like it one bit.
Further, if you are operating in a sphere outside policy makers (the ol' boys club) they don't like it they can't manipulate or borrow against your assets (interest free).
Lastly, those b*tards in the banking sector, the ones who whine and complain about too much government restriction on their smoke-n-mirrors games resent like heck anyone operating outside those restrictions. Honestly, BitCoin could be playing hedge fund, derivatives or other weaselly pastimes where they can't get in and rig the LIBOR or such.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The US Govt. literally Does Not Care what currency you use to transact your daily life. You can use USD, EUR, JPY, Gold, Seashells, whatever, or yes, BitCoins.
As long as you pay your taxes, and, if operating a money transfer business (like a bank or currency exchange) you comply with a very long list of money laundering laws, you are in good shape. Ignore those laws at your peril.
And complying with these laws is hard. Banks have entire large departments that do nothing but shuffle that particular bit of paperwork; it's not a trivial task, and .com entrepreneurs setting up shop from scratch are rather unlikely to get it right (Mt. Gox didn't), if they pay attention at all.
If the expression is lawless in itself, that counts, too
With this logic, you could make criticism of politicians illegal, and this country would still have free speech. After all anyone who criticizes a politician is committing a crime and their speech is no longer protected by the 1st amendment.
Well, My statement above was obviously sarcasm, but when you start adding words to The Constitution to defend your statement, I have to discount your position. Speech is not limited to opinion. Its not limited to verbal expression. Art is speech. Porn is speech. Comic books are speech. Humor, in whatever form it takes, is speech. In the case of CU, money is speech. You can try to turn all of those things in to political statement in order to protect them, but the reality is, whether you understand it, or agree with it, expression in all of its forms is speech. All forms of speech are inherently legal. We can play lots of games with how we can make speech illegal, but they are either misunderstanding of how the law works, bad laws or misapplications of the law. However; All of you rights end precisely where mine begin and vice versa.
Murder is not free speech because you you have trampled on the rights of another person to live.
Racial Discrimination, with out legal impact, is actually free speech. Again, its when that discrimination effects other people's inherent rights that you have a problem.
Slander, should be free speech, if only to allow us to judge people individually and not by the lies that others tell.
Now back to your free speech "test." first there are several, but the very important word you left out yours was "imminent." And because this test only applies to apolitical speech, you are wrong on two counts. Money is speech. It is inherently political speech and laundering money to ensure anonymity, creates anonymous, political speech. Even if it was not political is not inherently or imminently unlawful. It is therefore protected.
Thank you for supporting my once sarcastic remark that, due your proof by absurdity, I now believe.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
There are all sorts of companies that issue their own currency. IE Canadian Tire gives away Canadian Tire Dollars that can be used to make purchases in their stores. Wouldn't these store dollars be counted as unlicensed money transmitting? BitCoin is not all that different. Seems like a witch hunt to me.
You're supposed to become CEO of a billion-dollar bank and then start money laundering. The government's fine with it if you do it that way.
At first, I thought "What?! Charlie Sheen deals with Bitcoin?!"..
We did pretty much exactly that, with the Sedition Act of 1918. It was just about as bad as you make it sound, and was eventually repealed, but before that it was upheld. The logic used to pass it was that expression was still free, but it had to be done nicely during wartime, so as to not undermine the American war effort.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank".
Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel Money
Royal Bank of Scotland fined £5.6m for failing to properly report over a third of transactions
EU fines Royal Bank of Scotland £324m over Libor rigging
The problem isn't that they would treat Charlie Shrem differently, the problem is Charlie Shrem doesn't have 2 billion dollars to give them.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Other banks are equally guilty of money laundering. CITIbank (among others) is involved with money laundering as well. To start with, read Charles Bowden's 'Down By The River' and ''Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields'. This is also interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... In the land of many laws, many laws are broken.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
so what if they are allowed to teach it? i bet if you looked through all those green ones and saw how many ACTUALLY TEACH it, you would find that the numbers are much much smaller
Sounds like you're exactly the sort of person my sig was written for.
Let's start by noting that I did not intend to quote the SCOTUS opinion nor the Constitution verbatim, but rather to include the meaningful semantics established by case law since their writings. You would do well to research first, rather than dismissing positions you don't like.
Speech is not limited to opinion.
Speech is inextricable from opinion. How exactly, as a human, do you express anything without inflecting opinion on it? Even by blandly stating facts, the choice of facts to present represents an opinion, and the choice to state anything at all is itself representing an opinion. Art, porn, comic books, humor, and financial decisions are all curated according to opinions. It is that opinion that is protected, including the part that decides that porn is the best way to make a political commentary.
SCOTUS has opined that absolute free expression is, colloquially, a rather large can of worms. If someone wants to make a point about how ineffective gun control is, what better way than to embark on a shooting spree? If the protection is absolute, clearly this must be a protected act as well, especially if the shooter is careful to only shoot near people, but not actually hit them. Every action is merely the expression of a desire by the perpetrator, so per the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law prohibiting anything, right?
To avoid the anarchy of having everything protected, courts have usually protected the underlying opinion, but may still condemn the act used to express the opinion. You can, for instance, advocate that the IRS should be dissolved, and you can encourage others to not file their taxes, and you can even produce IRS-themed porn if you so choose, but failing to file your own tax paperwork is still illegal.
this test only applies to apolitical speech,
[citation needed]. The test itself was formed in relation to a political case.
Thank you for supporting my once sarcastic remark
Try </sarcasm> next time.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Did anyone else see that as Charlie Sheen?
In NJ its all about who you know. For example, John Corzine, a close political ally of President Obama. "Former New Jersey governor and U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, whom President Obama once hailed as an “honorable man” and one of his “best partners” in the White House, has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress about his role in the collapse of the investment firm MF Global." http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po... [go.com]
Cheaper because you don't have to pay money transfer fees.
In the U.S. consumers don't pay the transaction fees on credit and debit cards, and in many states merchants are prohibited from adding a surcharge to cover this fee or offering a discount for a cash transaction.
Bitcoins only allow merchants to avoid the credit/debit transaction fee and receive a greater profit margin. Note merchants tend to convert bitcoins to USD immediately upon receipt, the fee for this conversion is usually far far lower than the credit/debit card fee. Sometimes even a flat fee for the month.
were intended to be used to promote and support unlawful activity, to wit, narcotic trafficking on the "Silk Road" website.
It doesn't say what evidence they have make this assertion, but I can't imagine not having to prove intent.
Simply because a hunting rifle can be used in a murder, it is not likely I would be charged for selling your homicidal brother my 30-06.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If they're being charged with Money Laundering, doesn't that mean the BitCoin is now considered "Money" by the Feds?
I don't know what you think "the market place is showing interest in bitcoin" would look like, but hopefully it would not require the complete replacement of the dollar to reach this threshold.
What would it look like? Investment banks would set up divisions to speculate in bitcoin. Banks (real banks) would start taking deposits and lending in bitcoin. Retail transaction infrastructure similar to the credit card industry would be set up en-masse. Companies like Amazon and Walmart would start taking payment in bitcoin. Currency exchanges would commonly trade bitcoin for other currencies. Commodities would be bought and sold in bitcoin.
It's not question of replacing the dollar. That will never happen.
didn't even try to pretend they didn't know they're dealing with Silkroad.
Before Silkroad was shut down? So the fuck what? Until charges are brought and a court decision is handed down, Silkroad is a business just like Walmart. Are we asking banks to make extralegal moral judgments about the sorts of businesses they or their customers do business with? Do they have a list of people they don't like, who they expect the banks to rat out? Who controls it? To whom must I make a campaign contribution to keep my name off or put my competitions on? You can see where this is going.
After the judgment, continuing to do business with them is a moot point. So just use the legal process to stop criminal activity and stop expecting private citizens to report their neighbors. That went out with the Soviet Union.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you want freedom you need to make a country. I'd suggest one in orbit. Then those countries that don't want to be smoking craters will leave you the hell alone. Then colonize the moon.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The law, in its infinite wisdom, forbids both rich and poor alike from panhandling, digging through trashcans, and sleeping under bridges.
The law also forbids rich and poor alike from trading stocks during certain periods of time, and from insider trading, and from failing to correctly account for profits of their corporations, and from failing to pay inheritance taxes, and from speeding in their Ferraris, and from paying less than minimum wage to their employees...
Canadian Tire "Money" is technically classed as a coupon
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
Free speech is the right to express any opinion.
And the right to speak anonymously is protected. Since spending or contributing money has already been determined to be speech, the anonymous transfer of money should be protected.
In fact, the currently-held test for whether an expression is protected is whether it directly causes lawless action.
But evidently not for money laundering. That is ipso facto illegal activity even absent other crimes. There are plenty of good (and legal) reasons to anonymize financial transactions. Interestingly enough, a major one is to keep other parties 'front running' transactions by the use of inside information. And one significant group of front runners (with a legal exemption from trading on inside information) happens to be Congress.
I want to keep the government's nose out of my financial business because I don't want to give a bunch of Senators a cut of my business.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think most libertarians don't want to circumvent laws. If there is a law they disagree with I expect they'd want to rescind it, not dance around it.
And I think most libertarians would probably assess a bitcoin's value at the value of the commodity that backs it, which is zero. But some may like to gamble that they could buy some and sell them to a bigger sucker.
Knowing the way the law works, failing to file suspicious activity reports will be the crime with the most jail time. It's piss easy to prove, where's your activity report, needs no intent and tends to make a lot of the other fraud harder to accomplish.
didn't even try to pretend they didn't know they're dealing with Silkroad.
Before Silkroad was shut down? So the fuck what? Until charges are brought and a court decision is handed down, Silkroad is a business just like Walmart.
The law, it does not work the way you think it does. They do not need a separate case to show that Silk Road was a den of iniquity, they just need to show that transactions linked to Charlie Shrem were part of criminal activity and that Shrem knew about it.
Are we asking banks to make extralegal moral judgments about the sorts of businesses they or their customers do business with?
Why yes, we (where by "we" I mean the United States of America) do ask banks to make judgements (not moral, but factual) about the people they're doing business with. If you want to run a financial services business in the USA, you must hire a compliance officer, one of whose jobs it is to watch for potentially illegal transactions and report them to the relevant legal authorities for investigation. It's not extralegal either, because, y'know, it's the law. Has been for decades, probably longer than you or I have been alive.
If you'd bothered to read the legal documents that have been posted, you would know that the Feds would appear to have an open-and-shut case demonstrating that Charlie Shrem (the compliance officer) was fully aware that transactions with "BTCKing" were very likely laundering of drug money. His emails with a superior discuss this pretty much openly. But instead of doing his legally required duties as a compliance officer in a financial institution, Shrem told his boss that they were banning BTCKing (note: not actually enough), then tore even that feeble excuse to shreds by going behind his boss's back to give BTCKing private advice about how to avoid raising further red flags inside BitInstant, such as splitting transactions into small amounts and using many fake identities so that no one of them was doing too much business with BitInstant. He became BTCKing's inside man, gave BTCKing discounts, and he and BTCKing all but openly discussed what they were doing.
Unless the jury decides the government's evidence is bad Shrem is likely going to do some jail time. What they've put into the arrest warrant is an open and shut case, and they usually have even more for the trial. I've read highly questionable justifications for arresting defendants before. This is not an example of that kind of problem.
Do they have a list of people they don't like, who they expect the banks to rat out?
Nope, dummy, they expect the banks to rat out anyone whom they suspect of money laundering, handling drug money, and so on.
After the judgment, continuing to do business with them is a moot point. So just use the legal process to stop criminal activity and stop expecting private citizens to report their neighbors. That went out with the Soviet Union.
This is not expecting "private citizens" to report their neighbors for thoughtcrime ala [i]1984[/i], it is expecting a specific employee in a well defined type of financial corporation to watch for specific red flags often associated with illegal financial activities and report them so that they can be investigated.
Stop with the stupid overdramatic libertarian WAAAAAH WAAAH MY FWEEEEEDOMSSSSS act and think for once in your life. Where to draw the privacy line is an important debate for a free nation to have, and to have continually rather than being complacent, but the place you looney libertarians want to draw it is extremist because basically you want to the law to have absolute certainty before even beginning to investigate. Which is obviously dumb. So just stop, and grow up a little, okay? Requiring banks to minimally participate in the enforcement of anti-corruption laws is not a harbinger of jackbooted oppression, it's a practical ap
Real money was used to buy and sell bitcoins, that is what is laundered. the feds don't give 2 shits about bitcoins themselves.
No one got arrested in HSBC for doing just this.
People scoff and say there is no legitimate use for bitcoin.
on the same measure, there is no legitimate use for mainstream banking and financial instituions.
think about that one seriously for a second, the latter had the same reputation as bitcoin for centuries.,
On the Legal side I would disagree. Much of the rhetoric for BitCoin is that it operates outside of regulated spaces. That doesn't negate your point about Libertarians wanting all those regulations recinded. But let's be honest, it's a tool to do illegal things with, be they drugs, hookers or banking.
On the Valuation side I disagree a bit less. Short term seems to show you incorrect, however I beleive you will be proven correct in the long term by market collapse.
In the U.S. consumers don't pay the transaction fees on credit and debit cards, and in many states merchants are prohibited from adding a surcharge to cover this fee or offering a discount for a cash transaction.
Ohh I assure you that the consumers pay the fees even if they aren't aware of it. The merchants aren't going to eat a 2-4% fee. That gets passed on through an increase in the price of the product which is shared by everyone even if they don't use a credit card.
Note merchants tend to convert bitcoins to USD immediately upon receipt, the fee for this conversion is usually far far lower than the credit/debit card fee.
Conversion prices are relatively low because otherwise no one would bother. There is certainly no advantage in using an alternate currency if you don't have to. Bitcoin benefits from not having any meaningful transaction infrastructure in place (like credit card machines) which doesn't come cheap. Clearing and accounting for all the transactions also has a big cost that hasn't been fully realized. Sure the credit card processors are taking a cut as a middle man but if you think the same thing won't happen with bitcoin you are being naive. Bitcoin is avoiding fees because the middle men cannot charge them, not because they will not.
Same deal as gift cards: You've already paid them the real money, now you just have a voucher you can choose to redeem at a different date.
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