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Bitcoin Trader Agrees To Work For Police In Plea Agreement
An anonymous reader writes: Florida Bitcoin trader Pascal Reid, who was arrested in a February 2014 sting operation as part of his plea agreement, promised to carry out 20 sessions of law enforcement training in Bitcoin as well as serve as a consultant in criminal cases involving Bitcoin. This is in addition to 90 days in jail with credit for time served and a $500 reimbursement to the State of Florida for the expense of prosecuting him. Qntra has a write up on the case and the full text of the draft plea agreement.
Judge: "$500 reimbursement to the State of Florida for the expense of prosecution"
Reid: "Can I pay that in Bitcoins???"
Making them read is probably slightly harder than getting them to fly.
A seminar is much easier for them - they can just pretend to pay attention while looking out the window.
They're LEOs. You'd need to teach them to read first.
So, once you got arrested by the cops, they can extort you for anything by throwing the book at you, and you either risk wasting your life in jail or comply.
This is your so-called "justice" in America?
You're conveniently leaving out the bit where he was helping undercover cops with Bitcoin for the purpose of obtaining stolen credit card numbers. Fuck this guy.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
It is a commodity, according to today's news at https://news.yahoo.com/cftc-br...
But according to the plea bargain "The Defendant, PASCAL REID, will enter a plea of guilty
to count three (3) Unauthorized Money Transmitter in violation of Florida Statute 560.125(5)(A)."
So what is it? Money or commodity?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
It's not extortion. It's compelling a person to be a witness against himself.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So, once you got arrested by the cops, they can extort you for anything by throwing the book at you, and you either risk wasting your life in jail or comply.
This is your so-called "justice" in America?
plea bargains are common place in most countries. I have no problem with them leveraging the threat of jail against scumbags like this guy in order to catch more or bigger fish. The only time I have real issues with plea bargains is when it is allowing some of the more depraved individuals get off lightly.
Since they caught him, what does that say about the intelligence of the BitCoin dude.
Here's a picture of Pascal Reid and he's exactly as you'd expect him to be. A pasty, doughy hipster who probably subscribes to Ron Paul's newsletter and has his own PornHub Pro account.
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/12...
You are welcome on my lawn.
You don't have a problem when somebody who didn't even think commit an actual crime is intimidatedinto a plea as they face grossly exaggerated charges?
That isn't even on your radar?
First, he took $25,000 USD cash. Since cash is most definitely money, money was involved. Bitcoin was also involved.
Secondly, a commodity is a fungible thing of value.
Money is a fungible thing of value (commodity) that does not spoil (it's a store of value) which can readily exchanged within a community.
So if it's money it is therefore also a commodity. It's not either/or , it's "yes, this is a commodity, is it also money".
And how do you feel when an innocent man accepts a plea bargain because he felt he had no choice but to give a false confession? That is, of course, on of the main dangers in coercing confessions.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Limits with criminal working with law enforcement. If law enforcement needs to take advice from criminals, than something is hugely amiss with their training. The only thing criminals should become involved with in regard to policing is testifying about other crimes already committed, nothing more. Pay an honest computer geek/nerd to do it, if it is actually worth doing. This stupid short cut of working with criminals just results in criminally run investigations, where the criminal again seeks to gain advantage by corrupting the process, false witness, reward based testimony and, the criminal being protected by corrupt law enforcement. The only accepted public service should be cleaning public parks, gardens and roadways. Citizens who have broken the law should never ever be used in ongoing policing operations.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
And how do you feel when an innocent man accepts a plea bargain ..?
... or when a guilty person is coerced into giving false testimony against an innocent person in exchange for leniency. It is common for suspects to agree to testify against another person as part of a plea bargain, and later retract that testimony, yet the conviction of the innocent person will stand.
Limits with criminal working with law enforcement. If law enforcement needs to take advice from criminals, than something is hugely amiss with their training.
They're going straight to the source to find out what the criminals do so they can figure out how to defeat them. That's pretty much exactly what they ought to be doing...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
this isn't about "coercing" a confession. He is guilty, he was caught. What he is doing is trading reduced charges/jail time for giving up other criminals. corruption is corruption and it will exist regardless of what laws are in place so saying you shouldn't endeavor to catch criminals as you might accidently catch someone innocent is ridiculous, police are there to catch criminals, courts are their to evaluate the evidence and determine guilt.
I'm torn. On the one hand it's wrong to attack someone for watching porn, on the other hand who the fuck actually pays for porn?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
You will get your clemency when cops read!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
why are you changing the topic to a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with the case and what kind of retards are voting you up?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
law enforcement has plenty of problems. it needs to be cleaned up of bad apples and structural stupidities
it's still orders of magnitude better than actual criminals
if you see no difference, you're only revealing yourself to be a social retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I don't have a problem with plea deals in concept (they do have their issues) I have a problem with this one because it's using the person to provide services that the police department would normally have to pay for. So is this going to be a trend now? When someone with knowledge that the police would normally hire in a consultant for they just make sure that there's a clause in the plea deal saying the person has to help the police. Why stop with consultants? Instead of community service you have to do your hours working at the police department. Free janitors, laborers, etc. Think of how much of the budget it will free up.
it's a tool. it can abused
you don't have an argument against it's use, you have an argument for monitoring of law enforcement and prosecutors
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so many internet tough guys in this thread
who will call 911 without a second thought if their house gets broken into
(cue the super duper internet tough guys and their fantasies of getting "justice" by themselves)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Problem is in the US it has been taken to an untenable degree. The Aaron Swartz situation is a pretty good example, federal prosecutors threw a litany of charges at him that could have put him in prison for up to 50 years, then offered him a 6 month plea deal. All for downloading some publicly funded research papers using questionable means. This creates a situation where people who have committed extremely minor crimes, or those who haven't committed any crime at all, are forced to "admit guilt" or risk an utterly devastated life.
you need to be able to keep track of one subject matter at a time. swartz is about prosecutorial overreach and retarded laws endorsed by congresscritters owned by corporations
it doesn't help the side of what is good and right to not even know what the fuck you are talking about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
internet tough guys. fat social retards eating cheetos in their parent's basement trying out the swagger and language of street drug dealers. pathetic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
internet tough guys. fat social retards eating cheetos in their parent's basement trying out the swagger and language of street drug dealers. hilarious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
look at my sig. i'm no friend of stupid ip laws and aaron's death was a horrible tragedy
but you need to be able to keep track of one subject matter at a time. swartz's case was about prosecutorial overreach and retarded laws endorsed by congresscritters owned by corporations
the scumbag in this story has absolutely nothing to do with swartz. not in intent, not in action, not in prosecution
it doesn't help the side of what is good and right to not even know what the fuck you are talking about. you can't change the system if your position is "bad things happening! everywhere all the time it's all the same and interchangeable!"
no, moron. know what the fuck you are talking about and be able to stay on target and topic. or you just reduce yourself to a useless blathering fool who hurts your cause by making those who care about this cause look to be nothing more than social retards
which, unfortunately as the comments in this thread shows, there are a lot of around here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
oh you're going to file a report, ok
and there is a system in place that uses that report to find your stolen stuff, which is why you're filing a report, right?
and that system is called...
hint: it's the same one being shat on by anonymous internet tough guy social retards in this thread, that they would all run to crying like babies, without a second thought to their socially retarded posturing in this thread with cheetos dust on their unwashed t shirts in their parent's basement
you have a really awesome fantasy life
i like that part where you never sleep, never leave the gun on the toilet when you take pee, and stay up all night wide awake with eyes in the back of your head tightly gripping your piece
you are never taken by surprise or have any weaknesses. that's impressive
even though every fucking criminal everywhere for all time, from muggers, rapists, home intruders, etc. depend upon the element of surprise
but of course, when you wake up with a gun is pointed at your head, you can reach for yours and pull your trigger before he pulls his, right?
another small hint for the heavily armed mouth breathing moron: what it means to be an adult is to leave childish socially retarded fantasies behind and recognize you aren't invincible. a boy scout hero complex doesn't make up for the cold hard facts of the reality of the world you live in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yea, you're a tough guy...
I own guns, but I'm the first one to say that a AR is a horrible weapon for home invasion... The rounds WAY over penetrate and you're responsible for the rounds, no matter why you're shooting...
A shotgun with birdshot is the only weapon I'd use in my home. Even a .45 is too much risk of over-penetration.
yes, the cops may falsely charge and falsely imprison an innocent person
i also understands the cops may charge and imprison an actual criminal
i am also fairly certain the latter happens a lot more often than the former
and when the former happens, we should work on making sure laws and policies aren't stupid, that bad apples in the system are punished and removed, and that less mistakes happen. and we should appeal bad convictions and overturn them. how's that sound to you?
what we certainly should not do is imagine that all of law enforcement is only defined by the bad outliers, because that would be fucking moronic
we need law enforcement. and we need to clean up law enforcement. what we don't need is a fucking crusade against the existence of law enforcement like a complete social retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"A shotgun with birdshot is the only weapon I'd use in my home. Even a .45 is too much risk of over-penetration."
You see this "wisdom" repeated everywhere. Interior walls are nothing but drywall, a pellet gun will slice right through them let alone birdshot at close range.
The only advantages of a shotgun for home defense are wider spread of the shot which makes it easier to hit in the nervous moment when all that practice runs down your leg in a puddle of fear and you are lucky to have managed to point in the direction of the attacker and fire a round. The other is that a tactical shotgun is shorter than an AR or AK and therefore more maneuverable.
Those aren't insignificant but wall penetration isn't really a factor.
"and there is a system in place that uses that report to find your stolen stuff, which is why you're filing a report, right?"
Hardly, the police will never find your stolen stuff. You file the report because the insurance companies require it. If anyone does happen to find your stuff it's going to be them, so they don't have to pay.
"i like that part where you never sleep, never leave the gun on the toilet when you take pee, and stay up all night wide awake with eyes in the back of your head tightly gripping your piece"
I like that part where you never sleep, never leave the phone on the toilet when you take pee, and stay up all night wide awake with eyes in the back of your head tightly gripping your phone.
You do realizing calling 9/11 is more difficult and takes longer than getting to your gun... and that's just the picking up the phone and dialing part. Then there is the waiting on hold part, then the waiting for someone to eventually get around to showing up. In a rural area that could be an hour of drive time for a state trooper or county sheriff. And when they do show up, they are looking for any excuse they can make up to charge everyone with something, including you.
You should watch the recent Mythbusters episode where they tried this...
Short of hitting a metal electrical box in the wall, even a 9mm went right through several layers of drywall and even a 2x4, and was still lethal...
A .45 has twice the energy of a 9mm, it would be lethal through a lot... more than I'd care to test...
Who exactly is going to do that? 90-95% of cases require a public defender and public defenders have an average of 7 minutes to spend on your case, have no investigation arm, and almost all that 7 minutes is spent at the appearances during which you first plead not guilty, the 30 second conversation to find out what the prosecution has decided to go with on the plea "bargain", and the subsequent appearance to enter your guilty plea for the plea bargain.
Abuse is the only form the plea bargain takes. It will stay that way too. There isn't a person in this conversation who doesn't have hundreds of charges coming if they'd been caught. The legal system is out of control. Almost everyone in jail is there for something which shouldn't be illegal whether they did it or not and once they are imprisoned for nonsense people then consider it perfectly acceptable to foster an environment of maggot ridden food and rape. If they ever get out they have reduced rights and aren't eligible for employment at any decent job ever again.
How about if the prosecutor doesn't have time to take them to trial and the defender doesn't have time to defend them, we simply call that a lack of due process and turn them loose. And we keep on doing that until our laws are sane.
"but i really want to know about this magical place you live where law enforcement never makes a mistake, has no bad actors and has perfect laws and policies"
False dichotomy. The current extreme of near universal corruption and abuse at all levels of government including the foot soldiers aka police and a magical land of perfect laws and policies are not the only choices.
you do realize that crime and criminals actually exist, right? you only imagine the existence of plea bargains as used against innocent people? what the fuck?
plea bargains are like a wrench. you use a wrench to tighten a bolt. you don't use it to hit a nail or open a window. if some dipshit prosecutor uses a wrench for what a wrench is not intended for, this is an argument against that dipshit prosecutor. it's not an argument against the existence of the fucking wrench!
you fucking social retards, where do you come from?
every single fucking step of law enforcement and criminal prosecution is ripe for abuse. from the time of initial contact between police and suspect, to sentencing by the judge, and every step in between, is rife for thousands of kinds of abuse. and we hear about the abuses and the tragedies daily
and yet, it is better than no justice system at all, by many of orders of magnitude
do you imagine bad intent only exists in the justice system and law enforcement? do you know what a society is like that does not try to combat crime? i'll give you a hint: that society ceases to exist. show me a rich happy society without a functioning law enforcement apparatus. go ahead, i'm waiting
you focus on fixing the problems in the justice system: the structurally moronic policies, the bad apples, you protect against how stupid mistakes can result in horrible accidents
but what you don't fucking do is whine about the existence of the fucking justice system! what is with you social retards?
genuinely, objectively, not as a simple empty insult, you are a socially underdeveloped moron, if you don't recognize the value and importance of law enforcement and prosecution of the inevitable criminals in general society. of which plea bargains are a perfectly legitimate, useful, and vital tool. to say otherwise only reveals you to be incredibly fucking stupid about basic human nature and the world you live in and what happens when society doesn't enforce the basics of how to treat each other. without enforcement, some people will continually treat others far worse than any fucked up law enforcement dept, that's for damn fucking sure. oh you say a law enforcement can do different kinds of worse abuse? then clean it up you fucking moron, don't argue against the existence of law enforcement and prosecution, and the vital tools they need, like plea bargains! jesus fucking christ
in your thinking and your words you focus on the moronic laws, bad actors, and royal fuckups
that's a tiny subset of the what law enforcement is
if you don't understand that, stop talking about what you don't understand. really. you care. but you're a fucking retard on this topic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you're a fat pasty socially underdeveloped fuck in your parents basement drinking soda by the gallon and with greasy pieces of chips on your unwashed t shirt
i would bet real money on that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
100% correct
i still want to know about where the retard i replied to is from, so i may google and find the easy top 10 examples of recent police and prosecutorial abuse from that country, since it exists everywhere
we're not talking about genocide here, we're talking about a plea bargain with a slimeball criminal. and the asshole i replied to acts like someone is jailing gandhi. this person is obviously a hysterical moron who has no sense of proportion, and i want to prove it to them by shoving far worse recent cases from their own country in their face
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously, people who think that sustained deflation is workable in a currency need to go and take ECON 200 again and l2money.
why are you changing the topic to a situation that has absolutely nothing to do with the case and what kind of retards are voting you up?
Because some people are talking about plea bargains in general, rather than about this specific case.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Why did he agree to be arrested? It makes no sense. Surely if he was at the plea bargain stage that had already happened?
Now if you meant "Florida Bitcoin trader Pascal Reid, who was arrested in a February 2014 sting operation, promised as part of his plea agreement to ..." then there's a way to write that.
At the bottom of the
So. He gets to con ANOTHER group of suckers into believing that Bitcoin is a Good Thing? Right?
Pfft.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's illegal to operate a "money services business" without a license. Basically, they're saying he was operating like a bank or a Western Union by the mere act of selling $25k in bitcoins for cash. I think this is a first of its kind case when it comes to bitcoin.
He had been charged with money laundering, but that charge had already been dismissed
hey, you're not allowed to take responsibility for your own safety in Police State USSA.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
An uninformed person reading that summary could be forgiven for thinking that trading in Bitcoins was his crime! I'm sure the words 'money laundering' could have been worked in there somewhere.
Weren't you just a few threads earlier arguing against home gun ownership? You do realize that crime and criminals actually exist, right? You only imagine the existence of guns as used against innocent people? What the fuck? You spewed a statistic and several arguments against protecting yourself with a firearm because it could be used improperly, yet you're here supporting plea agreements as a tool?
"you fucking social retards, where do you come from?"
Probably the same place as you hypocritical retards.
"if you don't understand that, stop talking about what you don't understand. really. you care. but you're a fucking retard on this topic"
Amen brother, shut the fuck up.
Increasingly? Have you observed what's been happening to crime rates?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Swartz wasn't threatened with life. Forty years was the maximum penalty for all the counts, and there was no way he'd get anywhere near that.
Moreover, he wasn't charged with what you say. He covertly used somebody else's network to DOS the academic paper site, denying other people the use of the site. That's actual harm. If he'd bothered to limit the bandwidth he was using, so he wouldn't have been an asshole about it, I don't think anybody would have cared, let alone filed charges.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
if you need a study to prove that law enforcement mostly fights crime, you are, objectively speaking, a socially retarded moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
law enforcement mostly fights crime
you understand that right?
there are bad outliers that need to be cleaned up. absolutely. better laws, more aggressive removal of bad apples, better policies and tactics to prevent tragedies
but my point here is ridicule the (objectively speaking, not a baseless insult) socially retarded morons who are actually on a crusade against the existence of law enforcement itself, and think law enforcement mostly hurts people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't believe in justice, you insensitive clod!
Is is this mod "overrated" I don't like the point you made day? Because I don't see any logical refutation. Unless "water is wet and law enforcement are good guys you idiot" counts as rational debate on Slashdot these days.
Right, my point was not that a .45 didn't have penetration risk. My point was that all calibers will over penetrate and therefore you don't really need to factor that in to your choice of home defense firearm. Your AK/AR will over penetrate but so will your shotgun loaded with birdshot. So use whichever you are most competent with or have at hand.
Hopefully you do factor it in to how serious a situation has to be before utilizing a home defense firearm regardless of caliber. That should be a pretty high bar and you should always assume you are going to be shooting whatever is on the other side of the wall.
That's debatable. There aren't really an abundance of people being shot at all. Unless you mean the ones being shot by people in uniforms.
An AR/AK may well go through your house, your neighbors house, and into a third house next to it, depending on the type of round you use.
At short range, bird shot will go through dry wall, but not a lot beyond that. Beyond a dozen or two meters, it may not even be lethal to a human wearing a heavy winter coat (assuming you miss his head). It would suck and hurt, but not nearly to the extent a real bullet would.
A .45 can easily go out of your home and into the next door neighbors house.
You haven't been paying much attention to the way police behave have you?
career criminals break the law less often than your average police officer. I'll not even get into how bad the "bad outliers" are.
Looks some little internet dipshit has forgotten that the vast majority of our violent crime and property crime(aka real crime) is actually caused by our laws and law enforcement. If we just got rid of the police altogether crime would go down. At that point, all we need are detectives and a couple grunt security to actually make the arrest. It would amount to less than a tenth of the law enforcement we have now and be far more effective.
What do you think this is about then?
If abuse of plea-bargaining is not prosecutor overreach then I do not know what is.
I'll trust a drug dealer before a cop any day of the week. They are simply more trustworthy, and usually better people.