Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Reseller on February 03, 2012, 04:15 pm
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I have roughly 1,400 BTC from selling on HackBB and other Deepweb sites and was wondering how ya'll safely exchange back into cash from BTC.
Thx.
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If you're serious about BTC trading check out the
#bitcoin-otc (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otc) IRC channel. Those people are more into the financial trading aspects of it. Other than I would just find a reputable exchange that cashes out, but there will definitely be some kind of fee.
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Srsly? Just cash it out on an exchange?
Fees are the least important thing to worry about. As soon as your BTC hits gox, it's under AML scrutiny. You have to give your government's tax agency some excuse as to why that money was earned legitimately, and mtgox will not help you claim it's trading income. A $7K EFT deposit in your bank account from dwolla.com is gonna look a little suspicious. You can't just list it on your 1040 without becoming an audit target.
This problem will get worse for Deep Web merchants doing their 2012 taxes next year. A year of economic growth is sure to produce some people who earn their entire living on the Deep Web, and a lot of them will live in Fascist countries like the United States. Most of them will be new to money laundering, and are at risk of doing it wrong and getting caught.
OTC won't help you: That channel is full of folks who think that SR tarnishes the image of Bitcoin by its very existence. Their advice will be to turn yourself in.
Tumbling your Bitcoins and then cashing them out is not proper laundering of your money. The money ain't clean until you can declare it to the IRS without becoming an audit target.
We need to start coming up with ways to make the cash we get out of our BTCs look legal.
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If you're planning on declaring it could you not say it was profits from speculation. Some people make big bucks and that's gonna be hard to disprove. Another way I can think of is say you run a cash bitcoin exchange. A few places sell gold for btc too, although anything you can buy and then sell will work.
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I think the first question to answer is, what do you want to do with the money? If you want to buy groceries, gas, and other small items that are often paid for with cash, I would sell them for MPs on SR. Expect this to be a long process.
If you want to buy something like a house or car, you have a little more work cut out for you. If you're expecting regular income, you need to make it look like you're running a business when you make deposits. For example, a $1000 deposit the first week of every month (or whatever amount, but be somewhat consistent). If it's regularly happening, then it could easily be a normal job's pay, and people wouldn't look twice. If it's sporadic, both with numbers and frequency, it's abnormal.
With that amount of money, you're also coming up against AML's. For example, you can't just walk into a bank and deposit $5000+ in cash without filling out a form. In fact, depending on the amount, the form is "optional" (they'll fill it out for you if you refuse, whether you make the deposit or not).
Careful careful careful.....
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very nice read about ML is " 100 cases from the Egmont Group "
100 real cases how people been busted via bank system. very educational !!
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Aren't there listings on SR for cash?
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Aren't there listings on SR for cash?
Yeah but, I think its cheaper to pay taxes on it. >:(
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I have roughly 1,400 BTC from selling on HackBB and other Deepweb sites and was wondering how ya'll safely exchange back into cash from BTC.
Thx.
Moneypak.
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So if you just send, say, $500 every two weeks from your SR account to Dwolla and your bank account, should you even report it on your taxes or would that just look more suspicious? If the bank doesn't report deposits of less than $5000, how would the IRS know? That is, if everything else you did was legal.
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So if you just send, say, $500 every two weeks from your SR account to Dwolla and your bank account, should you even report it on your taxes or would that just look more suspicious? If the bank doesn't report deposits of less than $5000, how would the IRS know? That is, if everything else you did was legal.
No, if they catch you THEN pay your taxes. They'll give you the option if its just small stuff. The IRS just wants your money.
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So if you just send, say, $500 every two weeks from your SR account to Dwolla and your bank account, should you even report it on your taxes or would that just look more suspicious? If the bank doesn't report deposits of less than $5000, how would the IRS know? That is, if everything else you did was legal.
No, if they catch you THEN pay your taxes. They'll give you the option if its just small stuff. The IRS just wants your money.
Yeah, what he said is true. I've not payed my taxes and they just asked me nicely to do it, and I did.
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Maybe I'm missing something that should be painfully obvious - but where's the real downside in using an exchange? BTC isn't an illegal currency. Converting it to and from some other currency isn't illegal. Suppose I were to go overseas and exchange a bunch of currency X for currency Y. Maybe I don't spend it all while I'm over there, and I come back with a lot left over and I need to turn it back into currency X. Then I go to the bank and I redeposit it, because I don't want to have a ton of cash sitting in my house. Even if the bank has to fill out the CTR (amounts over $10,000) - that doesn't really mean squat - it doesn't mean you made some illegal profits - hell, it doesn't even mean you made *any* profit - it just means that you have a bunch of cash that exceeds the threshold for reporting and they have to fill out a form. It's when you try to evade that reporting requirement that you run the risk of getting well and truly fucked.
For those of you in the US, think about this. If you go to Las Vegas, and you win a slot machine jackpot or a sports book payout of over $1200, they have to give you a W-2G and report that income to the IRS. However, suppose that instead you decide that you're smarter than that, and instead of playing the slots, you sit down and play blackjack for awhile. A few hours later, you cash out $25,000. Guess what? The casino is not required to report that to the IRS - and they don't. I'm not exactly sure on the reason why, but I believe it has to do with the fact that with table games, they really can't prove how much of what you're cashing out is actually *income/winnings* and how much of it might have been your original buy-in. With a slot machine jackpot, they can definitively say that your bet of $1 resulted in a win of $2500, and boom, you now have reportable income (which you can then offset by all those times you went to Vegas and lost).
One other thought. Suppose you do have enough BTC that you can send $500 in BTC to Dwolla. Start a "real" business. Put up a website for your business and say that you accept BTC. Maybe even do some real work in addition to whatever it is that you did to get your BTC. Or use your BTC to get your business off the ground - and then you can deduct your business expenses. There's nothing illegal about any of this -- except maybe whatever it was you did to get your BTC in the first place, but if you didn't break any laws there either -- I'm just not sure what you have to worry about. Remember, Al Capone got busted for tax evasion.
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It may not be illegal to go for a walk in 2 in the morning while wearing black, but it is suspicious. If a cop sees you doing it, you'll get searched, ID'd, checked for warrants, and asked where you're going and why.
The same thing may go for "abnormal" transactions. A CTR isn't a warrant for your arrest. But the purpose of a CTR and AML algorithms is to put you under police scrutiny, so that if you are doing something illegal, they can find out and bust you for it.
Once the police single you out and start asking questions, you're already fucked, because if they're asking you questions, that means they're also watching your house, going through your bank records, tapping your phone and Internet connection, and infiltrating your circle of friends.
Our goal is to not even raise the slightest suspicion about what we do, and where we get the money to do it.
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It may not be illegal to go for a walk in 2 in the morning while wearing black, but it is suspicious. If a cop sees you doing it, you'll get searched, ID'd, checked for warrants, and asked where you're going and why.
By itself, I think that's unlikely. Even for a Terry stop, there needs to be reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and wearing black and walking around at 2am might just mean that it's goth night at the local watering hole. I see the point you're trying to make, though - which is why I raise the counter-argument that it's probably less suspicious to allow the CTR to be filed as opposed to trying to evade it. As long as the bank employee processing your transaction doesn't think there's anything suspicious about your activity, then the CTR really is just a formality - but they can file a SAR on *any amount* if they think you're up to something (typically the threshold is $5000, but it doesn't have to be). So there's an element of good ol' fashioned social engineering here - if you go into the bank and deposit a bunch of cash and say that you won a poker tournament, as long as you don't look like some sketched-out crackhead, I bet the odds of getting a SAR filed on you are fairly slim.
Once the police single you out and start asking questions, you're already fucked, because if they're asking you questions, that means they're also watching your house, going through your bank records, tapping your phone and Internet connection, and infiltrating your circle of friends.
If the police are asking you questions, then that means they don't know shit. They aren't going to risk tipping off a potential target of a financial crimes investigation by talking to them about their spending and their lifestyle. They're going to wait until they've got enough evidence for a warrant and then just come in and arrest you.
Our goal is to not even raise the slightest suspicion about what we do, and where we get the money to do it.
Sure, that makes perfect sense - but then wouldn't that mean trying to push as much money through the system legitimately as possible? If you have a $30,000/year call center job, but you're driving a brand new BMW and sporting a Rolex, I think you're going to arouse more suspicion than if you actually have some kind of side business set up where it's possible that you could make enough spare income to afford those kinds of things. I don't know about you, but if I were a seller on SR, and my choices were between finding a way to declare my income and pay taxes on it so that it all looks legit or trying to find some way to convert all my BTC to cash and hope that nobody finds out what I'm doing, I think I'd be more likely to go for the first option. In the end, if you get caught, you're screwed either way.
I suppose it's really a question of volume, too. The risks and techniques and options and such available to someone that's got a few thousand dollars (like the OP) are probably way, way different from what's feasible for someone dealing with tens or hundreds of thousands (or more.
Actually, if you come back to the US with a lot of cash, it's likely to get seized at the airport.
Yeah, even if it's not cash, you could be fucked. I was reading a Wired article from an old issue about a couple of internet security software scammers and how one of the dudes got busted entering the country with an undeclared *check* for $1M.
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Why don't you travel to Panama (or another tax haven) and open an account.
Transfer your (clean) BTC to a place like MtGox, CryptoXchange, Intersango, etc and make a wire transfer to that Panama account. If you're not going to move huge amount of money, just have a debit card (or a second from another bank) to withdraw at ATMs.
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!!!Shameless advertising!!!
Buy my reloadable anonymous Visa, withdraw through some exchanger to the account number attached into it and find the nearest ATM or spend it straight from the card :)
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Sure, that makes perfect sense - but then wouldn't that mean trying to push as much money through the system legitimately as possible? If you have a $30,000/year call center job, but you're driving a brand new BMW and sporting a Rolex, I think you're going to arouse more suspicion than if you actually have some kind of side business set up where it's possible that you could make enough spare income to afford those kinds of things. I don't know about you, but if I were a seller on SR, and my choices were between finding a way to declare my income and pay taxes on it so that it all looks legit or trying to find some way to convert all my BTC to cash and hope that nobody finds out what I'm doing, I think I'd be more likely to go for the first option. In the end, if you get caught, you're screwed either way.
Agreed. However, there's a pretty big problem with your idea about running a BTC-based business: Real BTC businesses tend to also accept USD, which is where they make the majority of their money, because the Bitcoin market is miniscule. If you make $100,000 in Bitcoins but only $100 in USD in a year, it's going to look suspicious because none of the legitimate players have that income pattern, so you're going to get caught.
In fact, I'd say if the Feds wanted to round up all the SR sellers, all they'd have to do is ask the banks, Dwolla, and Mt. Gox for their records (which they'll gladly give) and do some traffic analysis. Whoever's income is more than 60% not-recently-mined Bitcoins (at the time of their deposit to Mt. Gox) is probably a SR seller.
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Thanks for the tip madmax I'm sure any unwitty LE would love that information..I'm suprised how many vendors there are if transferring is really this obvious
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Agreed. However, there's a pretty big problem with your idea about running a BTC-based business: Real BTC businesses tend to also accept USD, which is where they make the majority of their money, because the Bitcoin market is miniscule. If you make $100,000 in Bitcoins but only $100 in USD in a year, it's going to look suspicious because none of the legitimate players have that income pattern, so you're going to get caught.
Yeah, point taken. At the risk of drifting way off-topic and hijacking the thread, this brings to mind a couple of other interesting questions...
a) What percentage of the BTC economy is SR, and what percentage is "everything else" ?
b) When you buy or sell something on SR, when do coins actually transit the BTC network, and when are they just moved around internally from one user account to another?
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Agreed. However, there's a pretty big problem with your idea about running a BTC-based business: Real BTC businesses tend to also accept USD, which is where they make the majority of their money, because the Bitcoin market is miniscule. If you make $100,000 in Bitcoins but only $100 in USD in a year, it's going to look suspicious because none of the legitimate players have that income pattern, so you're going to get caught.
Yeah, point taken. At the risk of drifting way off-topic and hijacking the thread, this brings to mind a couple of other interesting questions...
a) What percentage of the BTC economy is SR, and what percentage is "everything else" ?
b) When you buy or sell something on SR, when do coins actually transit the BTC network, and when are they just moved around internally from one user account to another?
Re: (A) , Bitcoin people are basically in denial about the Silk Road. It's a pretty damn big chunk of the B$ economy. SR doesn't file a Annual Report, but if it did that's probably what you'd find.
Most of them are libertarians or agorists in theory only. Once G-Man says hello they're suddenly all: "Yes Sir, No Sir, Three Bags Full Sir!". They disgust me with their weakness and moral cowardice.
In fact, the black market or Extralegal Economy is nearly always the largest part of *any* economy that is an emerging market. It's an ancient pattern well known to economists and investors. It's only in the West that the black market is much more diminutive than the white market.
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very nice read about ML is " 100 cases from the Egmont Group "
100 real cases how people been busted via bank system. very educational !!
Indeed very educational. Most important is common sense. Don't think because your case COULD be a legitimate you won't get caught. If it is uncommon, bankers will snitch on you.
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Very educational indeed. Here's a link, so it doesn't end up in your Google dossiers:
http://www.egmontgroup.org/library/download/21
The FIU initiated a financial investigation into Karel. He owned and managed a luxurious
restaurant in a tourist area in the country, but the restaurant was only busy in the tourist
period from May until October. His income from the restaurant could not reasonably justify
the large sums in his annual income statements to the tax authorities which, according
to him, were entirely earned from his restaurant business. Moreover, his acquisition of luxury
cars and boats could not be explained either.
This shows that it's quite a bit more difficult than just "Make a corporation and say that's where the money came from." If your transactions aren't 100% typical, then they're automatically suspicious. Keep in mind that these 100 cases happened in the 1990s, and since then computing technology has made it much easier for Big Brother to watch us. What took months of investigating back then might be completely automated today, especially in that financial panopticon known as the United States. We might all be generating SARs with every single Mt. Gox withdrawal.
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A Corporation (shelf or new), and a vague IT consulting/parts reselling/wholesale importing type cover story would be a good bet for a long term cover solution. Buy a dozen graphics cards and sell them for BTC, Help out a few friends by running virus scans their computers and write up invoices for "6 hours of IT consulting work" (paid in cash, of course). Buy bulk flash drives or cell phone covers or swedish penis pumps bulk from china, and split the packages and resell on ebay (increase in/out mail flow, makes packing materials, frequent shipping seems normal, etc.). Funnel as many Bitcoins as you can to moneypak cards and use those for buying everyday expenses and more bitcoins (if you can prove bank transfers -in- to Mt. Gox, then there's a great reason as to why you would be withdrawing to cash via bank transfer from there as well.)
By cycling money through legitimate BTC trades, creating records for cash from consulting work, and a bunch of random wholesale reselling, you're just a regular IT geek entrepreneur type.
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sell them for Moneypaks. It'll take a while though..
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sell them for Moneypaks. It'll take a while though..
This is exactly what NOT to do. You should read the PDF I linked to. Anything that requires extra effort is suspicious. Why would you do extra work to process a bunch of MoneyPaks when you could just insist that your customers pay in PayPal directly?
By cycling money through legitimate BTC trades, creating records for cash from consulting work, and a bunch of random wholesale reselling, you're just a regular IT geek entrepreneur type.
Cycling of money is also suspicious: In the PDF, several money launderers were caught because they deposited money and withdrew or transferred it shortly after, and the bankers didn't believe their vague, flimsy explanations. If this is suspicious, then so is buying a bunch of graphics cards on eBay and selling them again, especially if this is your justification for depositing money into your account from Mt. Gox.
Buy bulk flash drives or cell phone covers or swedish penis pumps bulk from china, and split the packages and resell on ebay (increase in/out mail flow, makes packing materials, frequent shipping seems normal, etc.).
You have to be able to explain how you were able to afford to buy a pallet or two of flash drives from China.
Certain types of transactions are inherently suspicious. Cash deposits (no matter the reason given), wire transfers to or from foreign countries, MoneyPaks, and anything that isn't what a typical person would do will get a SAR filed against your account.
Bankers don't just look for suspicious *types* of transactions. They attempt to fully understand the inner details of your business. If your business is making a lot of money, they will want to see documentation, prepared *properly* by an accountant, that shows where your revenue comes from and what your expenses are. If you don't have the documentation to prove your money is legit (or you refuse to show it because you think you have 5th Amendment rights), that's enough to justify surveillance, search warrants, etc.
This means that your shell company has to have innards that appear legit. Your company's income has to be in the form of payment most commonly used by your shell company's supposed industry. If most legit companies that sell widgets only accept cashier's checks and you take all your payments in gold bars because that is the easiest thing to buy with your dirty money, the banks will pick up on that like a pack of wolves picks up on the scent of blood.
If your shell company is pretending to be in an industry that you know nothing about, you'll get the internal details wrong and get caught. The banks know how legitimate companies operate, and can tell if you don't belong.
The type of business whose internals are easiest for the uninitiated (ie, us) to guess without actual experience is any type of consumer-facing Internet services company, such as advertising, games, porn, etc, because everything they do is pretty much exposed to the public. These companies typically accept PayPal and credit card payments from customers, and the only business expenses are hosting and labor. I suppose, if you could build such a site, which would be no small undertaking, you could then purchase anonymous pre-paid VISA cards with your Bitcoins, and use the cards to "pay" for memberships on your site.
The strengths of this approach are:
* No suspiciously BTC-heavy income
* No suspicious cash, MoneyPaks, or other inherently suspicious types of transaction.
* Your company's bank records can easily be made absolutely, 100% typical for the industry.
* The process can work for small vendors as well as large ones.
The weaknesses (and questions):
* Your site would have a lot of purchases with cards from the same obscure vendor. Is this a problem?
* You need to throttle the apparent growth of your company. A J-curve of revenue growth is suspicious.
* The debit cards would have a bunch of purchases from your shell company on them and nothing else. Would banks pick up on this?
* LE may be able to estimate what your revenue *should* be by appraising the content. This would be checked against actual revenue.
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Turn on a few trusted friends to SR. Tell them to spread the word. Offer them bitcoins at a cheap rate i.e. 0-5%. They'll buy your coins, their friends will want to buy coins from them. It's cheaper and faster than the exchanges for them, and puts cash right in your hand. Win-win. Obviously there are limits to how big you would want this web of coin buyers to get, but if you could keep most of them one link in the chain away from you, and that link was very trusted, you'd probably be fine. For a low volume vendor this would be pretty ideal IMO.
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That might be good for someone who does ultra, ultra low volume, as in maybe barely enough to buy a carton of cigarettes every week.
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Chip dumping on Bitcoin poker sites? What do people think of this idea? You could use this for income you want declared, and then you can transfer the rest to a Panama account that comes with an anonymous debit card.
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This topic is growing and might become huge.
If you want to cash bitcoins, there's plenty of options that wont put you in trouble.
For money laundering, realize it's not easy. There's many methods to do it properly and even more to get caught.
My recommendations are:
Buy gold coins. They're liquid, small and the government can't print it. And if you're lucky you might make more money if they increase in value. Hide them away from home and in different places.
When you have enough money, get an accountant willing to work with you and knows about the sector you want to do business. The business income should be realistic. Most businesses don't make a dime in the first months (growth should be slow).
Again, you can get caught for reasons you can barely imagine. I saw one guy who opened a laundry to wash money. He was making unrealistic profit and the bank snitched on him. The investigators simply checked the water bills and he got busted. He could keep the machines on (wasting water) all day but eventually an investigator could stay a week writing how many customers really entered his business and he'll eventually get screwed. It's not easy to launder money and if you get attention and start being investigated, it is even harder to avoid getting busted.
Don't think you can fool people who are paid and trained (for years) to bust you. Like every business, you have to start small. If you want to have a comfortable life, try to maintain a low profile. Buy a decent car (paying for as long as possible, even if its going to cost another car after a few years). Don't get a mortgage, RENT! Certainly not a mansion but a nice place that won't get that much attention. Those are the things more difficult to conceal. For the rest, it is much easier. When you buy groceries, pay with a debit card not related to your persona. If you buy stuff online, the same. Authorities can't go inside your house and check what possessions you have. Go to a restaurant every day and pay with cash or debit card. And NEVER use that card in places that can be linked to you. If you buy plane tickets with that card, that could be a problem in the future.
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How does one get a debit card without it being linked to their name ???
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Buy one prepaid card and use someone else name/documentation to register. Charge them online with an amount for your daily/weekly or monthly expenses. Never put more money than you're willing to lose. Check the laws on your country to see how hard it is to get one.
It all depends of your profile and how paranoid you are. The safest option would be to create enough for your monthly expenses. Let's say you have 5 cards and you can withdraw up to a 1000usd/day. Charge them online with a thousand bucks each and go to an ATM with sunglasses and a hat (or anything to cover your face, scars, tattoos, etc). Withdraw 1000usd from each card and leave the area (park far away to be sure you plate is not recorded). If you're a guy who always wear a suit, put something very casual just the days you do the withdrawals got it?
Now you have 5 thousand in CASH and a hard trace to follow. If you do this once or twice a month in different areas (far from home) and in different hours (no patterns), I believe it will be very difficult for a LEO to bust you. Hide the debit cards when you're not using and/or keep a "clean" one for normal expenses.
Ideally you will not start laundering money until you stopped doing illegal business. If you get busted you might lose your laundry/legal business and all the money you cleaned up.
I think it is a pretty safe method. Any objections?
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Buy one prepaid card and use someone else name/documentation to register. Charge them online with an amount for your daily/weekly or monthly expenses. Never put more money than you're willing to lose. Check the laws on your country to see how hard it is to get one.
It all depends of your profile and how paranoid you are. The safest option would be to create enough for your monthly expenses. Let's say you have 5 cards and you can withdraw up to a 1000usd/day. Charge them online with a thousand bucks each and go to an ATM with sunglasses and a hat (or anything to cover your face, scars, tattoos, etc). Withdraw 1000usd from each card and leave the area (park far away to be sure you plate is not recorded). If you're a guy who always wear a suit, put something very casual just the days you do the withdrawals got it?
Now you have 5 thousand in CASH and a hard trace to follow. If you do this once or twice a month in different areas (far from home) and in different hours (no patterns), I believe it will be very difficult for a LEO to bust you. Hide the debit cards when you're not using and/or keep a "clean" one for normal expenses.
Ideally you will not start laundering money until you stopped doing illegal business. If you get busted you might lose your laundry/legal business and all the money you cleaned up.
I think it is a pretty safe method. Any objections?
It's just that many prepaid cards require you to login to a website to manage them or to get them in the first place, and they really don't like TOR nodes... You'll have to setup yourself up a proxy server. Not one on the list the credit card companies have.
Not saying you're wrong, it's just sometimes more difficult than it appears.
Also, I'm fairly sure you can't withdraw $1000 per day with a single card. Obviously this changes across justifications, but still.
Protip: get your money up to the ATM limit e.g. $500 at 23:55. Then wait a few minutes and withdraw the other $500. Also, prepaid cards can have very strict restrictions about how much you can spend with a single purchase. Since 9/11 the government cracked down on all this stuff a lot. i.e. prepaid, gift cards et al.
The devil is in the details. If you know of any more straight forward solutions tell me, it's obvious you've thought about it for a while.
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How does one get a debit card without it being linked to their name ???
You have to open an offshore account. The debit card is registered under a corporation that you own, but no one knows you own it as your identity is protected under banking secrecy laws. It's only worth doing with larger amounts of money though.
You can withdraw up to $10,000 in cash a day, and you are only limited by your account balance with non-cash transactions.
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It's just that many prepaid cards require you to login to a website to manage them or to get them in the first place, and they really don't like TOR nodes... You'll have to setup yourself up a proxy server. Not one on the list the credit card companies have.
Not saying you're wrong, it's just sometimes more difficult than it appears.
Also, I'm fairly sure you can't withdraw $1000 per day with a single card. Obviously this changes across justifications, but still.
Can't you go to a public wifi to register them? Can't you go to a McDonalds, Starbucks or a cafe in downtown? I don't think them all are blacklisted.
After you register them once, I don't think you need to do much about it. Keep your stash in YOUR bitcoin wallet. Send bitcoins to different platforms like mtgox, cryptoxchange, bitcoinica, intersango... The more the better since you can dissolve the transfers and get less attention. Go online in each of them and transfer the amount you're going to withdraw that day to your debit cards.
You could use only 2 cards and withdraw once a week (1000 bucks). The amount of debit cards you need depend of your needs (how much money you need and how much you can withdraw at the ATM). If you're only able to withdraw 500 bucks, go to the ATM twice a month (in my previous example).
About the limit, it depends of the card and the country.
IMHO the worst case scenario is having the funds blocked. That's why you should keep the money in YOUR wallet.
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How does one get a debit card without it being linked to their name ???
You have to open an offshore account. The debit card is registered under a corporation that you own, but no one knows you own it as your identity is protected under banking secrecy laws. It's only worth doing with larger amounts of money though.
You can withdraw up to $10,000 in cash a day, and you are only limited by your account balance with non-cash transactions.
Bank secrecy laws does not exist anymore thanks to US government. Doesn't matter how your name is concealed inside the corporation. If you're somehow the beneficiary, investigators can get your name.
Let's say you open it with a fake name. Making deposits (specially big) and withdrawing the same day or week might get attention and the banker will snitch on you. And there is a huge risk going to the counter to withdraw that amount. you'll never know if a LE is "expecting" you.
A book I recommend. Asset Protection by Adkisson & Riser:
http://www.amazon.com/Asset-Protection-Concepts-Strategies-Protecting/dp/0071432167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329778992&sr=8-1
It shows that all those ads on the internet about "impenetrable offshore bank account/Real Estate/etc" are not that safe, specially in US.
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Chip dumping on Bitcoin poker sites? What do people think of this idea? You could use this for income you want declared, and then you can transfer the rest to a Panama account that comes with an anonymous debit card.
Bitcoin poker sites are as illegal as SR if you're in the US. You might as well declare that you made the money selling drugs.
If you're not in the US, you need to look out for Seals With Clubs' anti-collusion algorithms. If your strategy looks like collusion, you're banned.
Volume on those sites is extremely thin. I don't know what effect this would have on the believability of you moving hundreds of BTC through them.
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Can't you go to a public wifi to register them? Can't you go to a McDonalds, Starbucks or a cafe in downtown? I don't think them all are blacklisted.
If you go to ANY apartment complex, you'll find unsecured wifi connections that give you residential IP addresses almost guaranteed not to be blacklisted.
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Bank secrecy laws does not exist anymore thanks to US government. Doesn't matter how your name is concealed inside the corporation. If you're somehow the beneficiary, investigators can get your name.
Let's say you open it with a fake name. Making deposits (specially big) and withdrawing the same day or week might get attention and the banker will snitch on you. And there is a huge risk going to the counter to withdraw that amount. you'll never know if a LE is "expecting" you.
A book I recommend. Asset Protection by Adkisson & Riser:
http://www.amazon.com/Asset-Protection-Concepts-Strategies-Protecting/dp/0071432167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329778992&sr=8-1
It shows that all those ads on the internet about "impenetrable offshore bank account/Real Estate/etc" are not that safe, specially in US.
I'm from the UK, and yeah I understand that if you're under criminal investigation they can request your details (as of 2008/9?), so my post was misleading. If you wired money anonymously through intersango and withdrew from ATMs though, are you saying that the transfer would be flagged and they could get my details somehow based on that? Thanks, I'll check that book out.
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Bitcoin poker sites are as illegal as SR if you're in the US. You might as well declare that you made the money selling drugs.
If you're not in the US, you need to look out for Seals With Clubs' anti-collusion algorithms. If your strategy looks like collusion, you're banned.
Volume on those sites is extremely thin. I don't know what effect this would have on the believability of you moving hundreds of BTC through them.
Yeah obviously couldn't be used in the US. Avoiding being flagged is easy it just costs you more in rake, regarding the volume it would make it less believable but definitely not beyond reasonable doubt. You could easily have rich Russian friends you met online that enjoy playing you all the time, that also prefer using anonymous currencies. But yes, an increased site volume would make it less suspicious.
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Guys, thanks for the great responses to my posts. I am glad that so many people have opinions on the matter.
As of now, I have just under 2,000 BTC in my account. I am considering doing an exchange via Wm-Center.com or something similar.
I will exchange my BTC for Western Union. Does anyone know if they flag suspicious amounts? Is there a max amount one can send?
FYI: I use a fake-id to pickup all my funds at Western Union.
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If you wired money anonymously through intersango and withdrew from ATMs though, are you saying that the transfer would be flagged and they could get my details somehow based on that? Thanks, I'll check that book out.
Hopefully your account at intersango is anonymous (or registered with a fake name). I'm not saying it would be flagged but it COULD. Moving money in/out fast MIGHT be a red flag. That's why you choose different platforms so in case one bitcoin account or prepaid card gets blocked, you still have more. Don't mix them.
ie. Intersango goes with card 1. mtgox with card 2... For intersango, you're just a guy who moves a thousand pounds to the same card monthly. That's not suspicious since it is periodic and does not involve a large sum.
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How does one get a debit card without it being linked to their name ???
You have to open an offshore account. The debit card is registered under a corporation that you own, but no one knows you own it as your identity is protected under banking secrecy laws. It's only worth doing with larger amounts of money though.
In the USA, when you file your taxes, you are required to report your ownership/control of any foreign bank accounts. Dunno what happens to you if you don't, but if they find out that you have one and you didn't report it to the IRS, I can't imagine the outcome would be anything good.
Anyone ever notice that when you put the words "the" and "IRS" together, you get "theirs" ? ???
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Guys, thanks for the great responses to my posts. I am glad that so many people have opinions on the matter.
As of now, I have just under 2,000 BTC in my account. I am considering doing an exchange via Wm-Center.com or something similar.
I will exchange my BTC for Western Union. Does anyone know if they flag suspicious amounts? Is there a max amount one can send?
FYI: I use a fake-id to pickup all my funds at Western Union.
Man, your crazy. Western union is the first place LE looks for illegal activity. You may be using a fake ID, But keep in mind you have to fill out a form to cash out from WU. Make sure you leave no finger prints on that form.
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very nice read about ML is " 100 cases from the Egmont Group "
100 real cases how people been busted via bank system. very educational !!
Excellent reference, thanks!
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In the USA, when you file your taxes, you are required to report your ownership/control of any foreign bank accounts. Dunno what happens to you if you don't, but if they find out that you have one and you didn't report it to the IRS, I can't imagine the outcome would be anything good.
Anyone ever notice that when you put the words "the" and "IRS" together, you get "theirs" ? ???
According to Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/irs-focuses-on-wealthiest-in-foreign-bank-account-reporting-plan.html
The IRS is going to require foreign banks to report American account holders to them. I don't know how it is that the American IRS has jurisdiction over foreign banks, though. I can't seem to find an explanation of that one anywhere.
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There's an 60 minutes episode showing an ex swiss banker snitching on US clients expecting to be compensated for his "services to the US government". The IRS pays you around 30% of the amount they can get from a person you snitch on! Funny though he didn't get the money and got arrested. Probably there was too many corrupt politicians in those accounts.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6050196n