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Comment by ArnoVW | Hacker News Reader

While it is true that they will likely not see any money, it does mean that they have effectively banished these people from the US.

Perhaps it's not as life altering as jail or fines, but still: no holidays in Florida or Hawaii. No meeting peers at a congres in the US. Not even using flights from American carriers to go to South America, as they will likely pass via a US hub.

Worse. If they ignore the whole thing, at some point they will get condemned of contempt of court. That's a criminal offense. That means you can try and get interpol involved. Once you have an interpol Red Notice to your name, international travel to any civilized country becomes complicated.

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> it does mean that they have effectively banished these people from the US.

This is quite irrelevant to the vast majority of Earth's population. I know some Americans consider the US to be the center of the world, but I doubt that sentiment is prevalent in Russia of all places.

This ^

> Perhaps it's not as life altering as jail or fines, but still: no holidays in Florida or Hawaii. No meeting peers at a congres in the US. Not even using flights from American carriers to go to South America, as they will likely pass via a US hub.

This is both telling, and curious. The kind of mental model of the world required to foster this as a concern for most people, is interesting.

Russian cyber criminals and other rich people often vacation globally. I didn’t check the defendant’s facebooks but I would be surprised if they have never visited the US.

Yeah rich people travel all over the place, sure, but equating the inability to visit Florida or Hawaii with jail time?!

Florida? Putting Florida and Hawaii in the same sentence, is funny at best. There are plenty of countries these guys can travel to, if they have enough money, they can get a passport with a different name, etc. People don't care about the US as much as Americans think. Maybe OPs is from some 3rd world country where going to America is the dream of a lifetime.

Nice cherry pick

Money implications too, possibly? - like not being able to use SWIFT payments or use common banks. This could be quite important for scammers.

Luckily they have that new way to transfer illegal funds, uh what's the name...

You still need to turn it into real money at the end of the day.

Or wait until the house of cards that is fiat money turns into real money with no counterparty risk.

Look at the risks involved in having central banks as the final counterparty for all our government's fiat monies: [0]. This is why increasingly companies, banks, pension and insurance funds, and governments are turning to it a a pristine global digital collateral with no counterparty risk.

“The key question facing Bitcoin nearing the onset of 2022 is whether it’s peaking or simply a consolidating bull market,” wrote a recent Blomberg Intelligence report[1]. “We believe it’s the latter, and see the benchmark crypto well on its way to becoming global digital collateral in a world going that way.”

[0] Consider the multiple hyperinflation disasters of the 20th century, I.e., the century of central banks. https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/do...

[1] https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/10/1489771_Crypto...

But don't scammers already use banks under false identities, or bank accounts for which they stole the credentials?

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