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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.
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.
The money laundering charge he received wasn't because bitcoin is money, it's because he agreed to take $30,000 and help them pay for stolen credit cards by converting their US dollars (money) into bitcoin with which they can swap for the CC numbers. Instead of bitcoin they could've used gold bars or silver or pearl necklaces, it's just that bitcoin was more convenient.
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.
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