How are they making use of this feature set? I'd like to see a diagram with arrows and stuff.
Boss: "Courier, deliver this money to <address>, code is 12345678" Courier: at <address>, "Hey Drop, what is the code?" Drop: "Code is 12345678" Courier: "That's correct, Here's you're money" Drop: Tears bill in half and hands part with serial number to Courier as proof
Our money (US Currency) has two (of the same) serial numbers on each bill; one on the lower left and one on the upper right for dollar bills. Other denominations also have two; one on each side of the front of the bill, however they are in opposite places i.e. upper left, and lower right--at least the current bills in my wallet are that way.
People do this because having more than ~3000$ cash (in Rupees) is illegal, but people use it anyway.
So I can tell you that the Drop has the note.
And yes, here the whole note (bill) is given to the courier by Drop as receipt, not by tearing in half.
And I don't think even there people tear the serial number into half. Just the note.
Wait, really?
Do you mean no one is allowed to keep that much money in a safe in their house etc., or what?
Why?
The dealership, when time came to close, absolutely freaked when I pulled out the cash. Another set of IRS forms... and sorted it after several phone calls.
Where are you getting that from? [1] There is nothing even close to being illegal to possess in the US any amount of cash. There are laws to prevent illegal activity and against structuring (attempting to deposit below some limit to avoid disclosure).
Now to what appears to be your point having $100,000 in cash in open display in your car when you are stopped by the police will definitely raise suspicions. But then again so will many other things that are not illegal but might raise suspicions depending on the context of where they appear. (Walk into a bank with a toy pistol vs. walk around your friends backyard with a toy pistol).
[1] And what is 'nearly illegal' is that like 'nearly pregnant' (the classical example actually 'pregnant' or 'not').
“Only criminals carry large quantities of cash”.
Because the way people talk about civil forfeiture is as though this happens all the time, but ostensibly there's not supposed to be a problem if the cash is traceable.
Stories about civil forfeiture abuses that I've read don't delve into whether the victim actually was able to prove the source of the money in a normal way.
The problem is that this cash is essentially their entire savings. Which means their ability to fight the forfeiture is limited, and the arresting police can infer that. Rich people tend not to need to have even that amount of cash: they can take advantage of the normal banking system to transfer money. And if they were stopped, it's easy to infer that someone is at least rich enough to quickly hire good lawyers to fight the seizure.
However, with that said, I think caymanjim was being intentionally unspecific to prove a point. It's not against the written laws to have large sums of cash. But if such cash represents most of your wealth, and you're transporting it across certain areas, you're at the mercy of various law enforcement who may overstep their actual authority.
You're implying that people with reasonable documentation for the source of their cash can't just fill out some forms, but need to hire lawyers or something. Have you seen news articles or other sources describing such a situation?
I'm aware of stories like this, and I've read them before, but I wasn't asking for more. I used to donate to the IJ, in fact.
I just checked and the bank I had an account with for many years requires $50 deposited to open an account and no minimum balance or monthly fee, includes free checks and debit card.
The credit union I use now has no minimum balance, no monthly fee, and no fee for writing checks. You have to deposit $1 for a share of the credit union, which you get back if you close your account.
My impression is these days they are making over 2% on deposits absolutely risk free, so they better not charge anything.
Like I said, my credit union requires a deposit of one (1) dollar, which you get back when you close your account.
People here show concern over digital privacy and net neutrality etcetera but that's just tightening the noose, because apparently they've already put one on the bare basics.
And then taking out more than a limit of cash is a very lengthy process now.
So yes, it's not illegal to store cash but it's very difficult. And doing cash transactions above a certain limit are illegal.
Why? Because many business people in India don't pay taxes.
Assuming the actual transaction is reasonably atomic, which it should be unless there's a fight or something, the the carrier can always prove that they delivered to the correct drop if they have a physical copy of the agreed upon serial while the drop can prove that they didn't receive a delivery if they can reproduce an undamaged copy of the whole bill. The ripping of the bill itself could plausibly serve as a step in a multi step process where the carrier may demand that the bill be ripped after the serial and goods are confirmed but before not yet exchanged so that the drop can't claim that a delivery was not at least attempted on the part of the courier. We could also do it with two bills, one from each party such that each party can have some proof that a transaction was or wasn't completed and with the right party in the case of a double exchange.
The upfront cost of forging passable $1 bills is too high to be economical to pull off just for these low volume transactions, especially after the logistical cost of injecting the bills or otherwise tricking someone to using a fake as well as keeping a copy on hand but even if you achieved that. You'd also have to contend with the fed's coming after you for forging currency if the bills you distributed ever got into public circulation in any significant quantity so it should be pretty secure as long as they're sourced from a fairly high volume location like mcdonalds or something.
The entropy might be somewhat useful too in bookkeeping like maybe using only bills ending with a 0 are for small cash transactions, 1 for large cash transactions, 2 is for drugs A, 3 for drug B etc... Entropy might be important but there are much easier sources.