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Comment by BWStearns | Hacker News Reader

It's a civilian criminal offense. The fact that he was a defense contractor doesn't make it a military offense. That would have to be a charge under the UCMJ.

@ryanlol: I very much hope that laws and treaties are never interpreted via "common sense". Tech is not the only field with a technical argot, and it is good that specific words have specific meanings. If laws were enforced by "common sense" then every time you had an interaction with a contract or government agency would be subject to the whims of whatever moron happened to have power over you that day. Even though that is sadly frequent in practice, it shouldn't be, it isn't law that it be so, and I feel much better that we at least aspire to better.

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Maybe in the US. Scandinavian courts use common sense much more liberally (sometimes even too liberally) than US ones.

>@ryanlol: I very much hope that laws and treaties are never interpreted via "common sense". Tech is not the only field with a technical argot, and it is good that specific words have specific meanings. If laws were enforced by "common sense" then every time you had an interaction with a contract or government agency would be subject to the whims of whatever moron happened to have power over you that day. Even though that is sadly frequent in practice, it shouldn't be, it isn't law that it be so, and I feel much better that we at least aspire to better.

You can hope, but as someone who has a plenty of experience with Scandinavian legal systems I'll have to assure you that's sadly not the case.

Anyway, here I am sitting with a money laundering conviction for receiving a wire transfer of some 6000 euros from a Chinese bitcoin exchange. The prosecutor could never find _anything_ explaining the origin of the money, but as an unemployed person convicted of (not financially motivated) hacking crimes the judge figured it was "common sense" that the money had to be the proceeds of a crime.

Well why could you not explain what the money was for? I mean you don't randomly receive 6000 euros from no one that you don't know. They must be paying you for something, and there would be a trail somewhere of what that was for. Just because there is no body, does not mean someone can not be convicted of murder. There must be some evidence. In this case the evidence was money, and you have to explain why it's in your bank account.

>Well why could you not explain what the money was for?

I possess a non-trivial amount of bitcoins, I sold some. It's really impossible for me to figure out what I got those specific bitcoins for, especially since this was around when bitcoin was at around $1k a pop so selling 7 or so was absolutely nothing for me.

According to Finnish law money laundering is activity where someone receives, spends, transforms or transfers illicitly obtained (this is a bit difficult to translate but the law specifically says "acquired by crime") property to cover up or disappear the origins of the property.

Logically you shouldn't be able to be convicted of this without proof that the crime actually happened, but apparently not here. Lighter sentences seem to make it easier to wrongly convict people, especially when it's extraordinarily rare for them to actually end up in prison.

Money is generally considered fungible, and if you really kept a stash at said exchange there's no "those 7 specific coins". You must however be able to explain where everything originated, and the sums have to tally up. Otherwise you risk having to prove that the shiny new car wasn't given to the petty criminal by this kind gentleman whose name was conveniently forgotten.

We're talking about bitcoins that went from literally worthless to $1000.

Expecting some sort of bookkeeping might be reasonable with real money, but not with imaginary internet money.

You're the guy from the Lizard Squad thing last year, right? Did this case happen before other investigations you've been involved in? If not, was your background used as "evidence" that the bitcoins might have been illegally aqcuired?

Yeah. This case was long before anything else, and only actually got to court last year (These investigations take several years here). And no, my background wasn't used as evidence as I was a first time offender.

And FWIW the investigation regarding me and LS was dropped a few months ago.

You must be processing a lot of money to feel $6k in the very brief period Bitcoin was $1k a pop is nothing. I think most people would remember that. And how is it really impossible to know what you got the Bitcoins for? Don't you have a registered business and submit taxes?

Are you saying that you provided to the court evidence of your legitimate business which accepts or transacts Bitcoins for services that it is impossible for you not to know about, in the process of which you acquired 7 or so Bitcoins (transactions for which will be on the blockchain), and then you sold them for a higher price at a Bitcoin exchange (transactions for which you should have receipts and email correspondence for) and they didn't accept it?

You don't have to answer any of this, obviously, it's just hard to believe there isn't more to it than what you're saying.

He might have just gotten into bitcoins early on.

Even if we accept nobody kept receipts or records in the early days of Bitcoin, aside from the blockchain, I can't think of a reason why someone running a legit business would find it "really impossible" to remember what they were selling.

Even if he couldn't really remember what his business was selling, he would still have receipts, records and/or emails demonstrating that the source of the 6000 Euros was a legitimate Bitcoin exchange, as a result of the massive increase in price.

Oh I know what I've been selling, but I can't really identify specific transactions. Nor do I have receipts, why would I? Most of the transactions are exploit sales over OTR/XMPP, possibly shady but not illegal.

This was also before the tax authority clarified on their stance on bitcoins, before that everyone was under the impression that you wouldn't have to tax your coins until you exchange them to real currency.

And that's ignoring all the coins I mined way back, it's literally impossible to attribute that transaction to any specific source.

Damn, sorry to hear that. It is however a solid argument for specificity of both requirements and interpretation and for relying less upon the judgement of individuals.

Outside of our discussion here, I honestly hope everything works out in the best way it can for you. On the bright side it's not a hacking conviction in the US?

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