Hacker News Reader

Comment by adviceadam | Hacker News Reader

Same could be said about a lot of things that most people would agree should be illegal, like tax evasion. Yes, you are not hurting anyone directly, but we as a society have decided that you shouldn't be able to do that.

Can you give me a reason why money laundering should be legal? It seems that the only reason why you'd want to do it is because you're covering up for other illegal activities. Taking money from one source and making it seems like it comes from another source seems exactly like fraud to me.

View on HN

Taxation is more of a tricky topic, but yes, we all agree everyone owes taxes so not paying them is a crime.

But money "laundering"? Who is the fraud against? What if I make a ton of money by running my own camsite. But I want to pretend I'm a successful software company. So my camsite buys a license from my software company that eats up all the profit. There's nothing wrong with any of this.

Doing the same, but with an illegal source, should be just as legal. Go after the real crimes (e.g. killing people for money).

No one in the history of ever has ever laundered money to try to convince the government that their legitimate enterprise was in fact a completely different legitimate enterprise. In fact that could be illegal too if you were using that information to convince investors that your software company was more profitable than it was. That is indeed fraud.

I mean, by your own argument fleeing the scene of a crime isn't hurting anyone. I mean, I didn't run anyone over while I was fleeing. Sure, I may have shot that guy, but the simple act of running away after I shot him didn't hurt anyone. Because apparently it doesn't matter that the act of running away from the scene is directly linked to the crime I just committed, and it doesn't matter that the only way you can prove I shot him is by catching me running away and then comparing my gun to the bullet inside the victim. Fleeing the scene of a crime is just a made up law. There's no victim.

Go after the real crimes! Like the one I just committed that you found out about because you saw me running away with a gun in my hand...

Yes, exactly - sounds like we are in agreement. Fleeing the scene isn't hurting anyone in general (might be a traffic issue though). It'd be unfair to tack on an extra charge of "ran away after murdering someone".

It's still (negative) evidence against someone, and if you see someone running down the street, a cop is perfectly justified to look in the direction they came and see if it looks like a crime was just committed.

To the point: People should be completely free to move their money around however they please, without having to tell anyone about it, full stop. If this attracts suspicion, fine, so do a lot of things.

The only thing I really have a disagreement with is the way I perceive your tone. Specifically "It's a made-up thing... We need to undo the marketing...".

What I'm trying to argue is, sure maybe money laundering shouldn't be a crime by itself, but it's not victimless and pure. There is no legitimate reason to launder money. Your claim in another comment that you might be embarrassed by your income source is not related in any way to money laundering. Money laundering isn't hiding the source of your income from people who might pick on you, it's hiding your source of income from the government. And the government only cares where you got your money if your source of income is illegal. They're not looking at your job and laughing at you. They're not going to send a Secret Service agent to your house and call you names. They're going to say "is that illegal? nope... did he pay his taxes? yep." and move on.

To be clear: lying to your wife about where you got your money is not money laundering. That's completely legal. Money laundering is telling the government you earned your money from a completely different enterprise to hide the fact that you obtained it illegally.

You know actually researching this and arguing it here has completely changed my opinion. I'm now 100% comfortable with the idea of money laundering being illegal and people going to jail for it. I'm not even joking. I'm changing my stance. Money laundering should be a crime. It is, at the very least, obstruction of justice.

The implications of the mindset of "money laundering is a crime" is the problem. It's how we get this invasive government reporting requirements on our own money - which apply whether or not you are actually laundering. It is how we end up with these $10K rules, and people getting hit for structuring. (Which is even more absurd. Create a law to make people get reported at $10K. Then create another law so if they do less than $10K suspiciously, that's a crime, too!)

So, if AML tactics were not so draconian and far-fetched, if it was just a tacked-on charge (like how they'll throw wire fraud on to everything), then it'd be an annoyance and unfair, but not so harmful. Instead, we have this fearful environment because people think laundering is some terrible crime, and that makes it more acceptable to have things like civil forfeiture.

Money laundering is a crime because only criminals have to hide the source of their income when it's paid in bank notes issued by the government. Don't like it? Ask your employer to pay you in untraceable gold doubloons instead of government-issued bank notes.

It's been a great conversation. It's rare that someone with a strong but controversial opinion on the Internet sticks around to defend it when they've been challenged. I respect your viewpoint even if I disagree with it.

>Taxation is more of a tricky topic, but yes, we all agree everyone owes taxes so not paying them is a crime.

So... If someone does (perhaps completely legal) contract work, accepts payment in BTC and makes their purchases with BTC, how are you going to know what they owe in taxes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com