When It's a Crime to Withdraw Money from Your Bank | Hacker News Reader

When It's a Crime to Withdraw Money from Your Bank

nytimes.com

95 pointsDaveWalk128 comments

On one hand, this seems almost like a Spinal Tap sort of situation. If you want to make it illegal to evade the reporting requirements by withdrawing $8,000 repeatedly, then write the law to require reporting $8,000, or whatever amount you're after.

On the other hand, the law is written such that it only applies to people who are aware of the law and intended to circumvent reporting. It seems like an easy case that withdrawing $1.7 million in increments under $10,000 is intentional, and that the guy who was Speaker of the House at the time that the law was updated by Congress would know that the law exists.

As is often the case, it seems like a bad person violating a bad law and it's hard to get worked up over either.

They don't have to. Structuring transactions to avoid reporting laws is also a crime. Periodic withdrawals of $9,999 won't save you.

A crime is when something hurts someone. The word "crime" is a moral judgement. Here it is merely illegal.

That non-crimes are made illegal is an indicator of corruption. When crimes are made legal - eg: kidnapping people for doing something that isn't a crime, as this law does, then you have corruption. Enough of that and you have tyranny.

It's easy to remember the difference if you look at it this way: The nazis murdering the jews was a crime, but it was perfectly legal.

What you've described is known as smurfing, and it is quite illegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring

So... planning your actions to respect the law is illegal.

Glorious.

Whether or not you agree with the law, how is intentionally avoiding having your withdrawal recorded respecting the law? Hastert could have simply withdrawn the entire amount at once.

No, he couldn't, because that would have been against the law.

No it wouldn't, it just would have been reported to the IRS. Not illegal, just reported for tax purposes

This has nothing to do with agreeing with the law, it's about complying with it.

If it says you must report any --single-- withdrawal larger than $10k, then you are complying with it if you don't report:

A single withdrawal $5k;

3 withdrawal of $9k;

Yearly withdrawals of groceries;

Like said in another comment, you could easily ask to report any --total-- withdrawal larger than $10k within a time frame if that's really what you wanted.

You are obliged to report withdrawals of $10k or more with a CTR.

Your bank is obliged to report any transaction deemed "suspicious", including transactions or series of transactions that you previously reported. Anyone working for the bank can decide that your transactions are suspicious for pretty much any reason. They are required to keep their suspicions secret from you. (Example: Gov Spitzer of NY's fall: http://www.banktech.com/spitzer-exposed-by-bankandrsquos-ant...? )

Basically, the government doesn't want people moving lots of untraceable money around, period. If you're wealthy and like to spend your money interacting with Federal law enforcement, go for it, but have a good attorney standing by and stfu.

In Sweden, they have created a similar system but which simply limits withdraws to $1,500 a week unless you visit a bank and ask for permission, for which takes a minimum of 2 bank days. Withdrawing $1.7 million in increments would simply be too impractical.

Wait, if I want to pull $2k out of the bank I have to ask for permission and there's a mandatory waiting period?

Yes, and it need to be 2 physical visits to the bank.

I honestly can't fathom any legitimate reason for that. How was there not a revolt when that passed? It seems incredibly arbitrary and nonsensical.

Really? Well, the Bankomat AB ("ATM Inc") ATM network page says that each card issuer issuer (ie. Bank) that is connected are responsible for setting withdrawal limits individually. Unless the card is from a issuer that is not connected to their network, in which case the withdrawal is limited to 2000 SEK (currently ~237 USD, ~214 EUR).

Also, as far as I know - I can walk into a FOREX Bank branch office and withdraw as much as I want to at any time with my current card, as my issuing bank has a deal with them for cash management.

As far as I know, there's no laws that restrict cash withdrawal in this way or any laws about reporting cash withdrawal to Skatteverket (Swedish "IRS").

  As far as I know, there's no laws that restrict cash withdrawal in this way or any laws about reporting cash withdrawal to Skatteverket (Swedish "IRS").

The only restrictions I can think about are for cash deposits. Basically, you need to declare where the cash is from. It's a checkbox type item where I usually answer "Savings." (It's that stupid.)

Each bank has a weekly limit, but they are all around $2000. Swedbank is 1500, nordea is 2000 and SEB is 2400. Some is based on 7 days, others 4 days period.

The law that prompt the bank to do this is in theory money laundering laws, where they are required to have "enough" procedures to prevent.

1500 a week do you mean in person or totally?

I normally transfer cash from my bank to investment accounts in chunks of $3000 in the UK

They aren't after transactions of any specific amount, just "interesting" ones. Large rare transactions are interesting, as are big transactions that have been broken up to hide from reporting.

Imagine you have a series S=[[datetime1,amount1], [datetime2,amount], ..., [datetimek,amountk]] of withdrawals in which the amounts are lower than 10 000 dollars. From there, it should be possible to define the predicate function isCrime(S)=yes/no for any such S. The way in which they wrote their so-called law, however, makes it obviously impossible to implement such isCrime() predicate function unambiguously. In other words, what we can learn from this, is that there exists a set of people who are pretentious enough that they insist that they can write laws, but who are obviously too stupid to do that properly. They are also dangerous because these people use violence in order to impose their stupidity onto others.

The UK is currently having great difficulty trying to ban "legal highs", which is obviously impossible to define.

Given the ample evidence that the current UK government don't care about tricky technicalities like human rights or cutting some slack to law abiding people and not harassing them I doubt they'll have any trouble sorting this issue out.

Or, criminality is a function of intent? Like it always has been for almost every law?

This strikes me as a congressional case of the XY problem (http://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem)

Somewhere, long ago, people were committing crimes involving large amounts of money, but law enforcement couldn't stop it. So they instituted financial reporting requirements for banks, to help identify crooks. But people can easily structure their transactions to avoid the reporting requirements.

So now you make it a crime to do that. Regardless of whether there was an underlying crime in the first place.

Oh, and then when the FBI investigates, you can commit a third crime (lying to the FBI) without having committed the first crime or second crime.

The police can lie to you. Yet you can not lie to the police. You can refuse to talk to them however.

Yes you can and in the process you piss off the prosecutor who for all intent and purpose might as well be the police. Now you actively have the law working against you

That's a charitable view of it. A less charitable view is that this is the early stages of currency controls. If we simply limited people from moving money around, like they did in the USSR or Warsaw Pact countries, and are currently doing in countries like Venezuela and Argentina, then people would know the jig is up and the dollar would crash. Here they are using the pretext of "fighting crime" to violate our rights (demanding information without a warrant violates the 4th and every instance of it is illegal under USC 18-242).... with the long term effect that regular people start to internalize the idea that you can't just take your money out of a bank, and trying to do it slowly is "structuring" and a crime.

Structuring is the very definition of a thought crime.. and people have internalized it already!

The "lying to FBI" charge is arguably the more important problem with this story.

See https://popehat.com/2015/05/29/dennis-hastert-and-federal-pr...

If he had been honest, could that not be used against him in court for past crimes?

He should have spoken with a lawyer before talking to the FBI.

You should ALWAYS talk to a lawyer before speaking to any law enforcement.

Except sometimes your silence will be used against you:

http://www.npr.org/2014/10/05/353893046/you-have-the-right-t...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...

You need to say "I am exercising my right to remain silent", then shut up.

And based on the second article I posted, you also need to make sure you don't look uncomfortable while stating that you are exercising your right to remain silent.

That's not how I read it at all. The "uncomfortable" is only if you remain completely silent.

Of course, but he didn't have to say anything.

He could simply not speak to them.

Lying and answering truthfully are not the only options.

In that article the most startling thing was this link[0] providing situations where average citizens unknowingly commit felonies or federal offenses and are charged with them.

[0]http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.asp...

Yeah; I doubt that most people actually commit 3 felonies daily but prosecutorial discretion is a bit shocking.

Basically, if they want to get you on something, they will, which is quite scary.

Hardly anyone commits three felonies a day. Harvey Silverglate is a defense attorney, and quite a good one, but you need to do your own research on any story he tells you because he only ever presents his client's side of the argument - which is very often what people like yourself want to hear. Every time I have gone to look up one of the cases and read through the legal appeals and the facts established at trial, the story turns out to be very different from the way he tells it. He'll talk about the feds coming in heavy-handedly to enforce some environmental regulation, for example, while omitting to mention that this client received repeated warnings and threats of legal action over a period of years in relation to the regulatory breach. I think he gives defense lawyers a bad name because while those hardball tactics are entirely justifiable in court (where the government has its own attorneys to refute his arguments and must provide evidence to back up their own allegations), using those same tactics in the sphere of public discussion borders on deception.

Yup. Read my comment above if you're interested. I had never heard of the guy, but you are being way too easy on him. Presenting the arguments as he does is in my opinion an objective intellectual fraud.

I've found a diplomatic critique to be more effective than a fiery polemic. Also, I've been making the same objection to that guy for many years and I'm a bit tired of it.

I looked up the first one, Violating the Lacey Act.

What they say happened: Two men were sent to prison for 8 years and one woman was sent to prison for 2 years for violating the Lacey Act which makes it illegal for importers to violate any foreign law. They violated a Honduran law which forbade shipping lobster is clear packages. They also mentioned that a small percentage of the lobster tails were slightly underweight.

What really happened: they were smuggling undersize (and hence illegal) lobster tails and using the packaging to conceal their crime. They smuggled an estimated $15M of illegal lobster tails. They routed the shipments through out of the way ports that had poor lobster inspection capabilities. Even after they learned of the federal investigation against them they continued.

The info on the site you linked comes mostly from some Heritage Foundation report. My summary above comes from a news article I found with 5 minutes of googling.

If they lead with that one, I'm not going to bother with the rest.

It seems that the risk of giving incorrect information to FBI agents while being interviewed, whether intentional or not, is so high that it's better just to not to agree to an interview, especially if you're innocent.

This is part of why you shouldn't talk to police without a lawyer.

I believe that too is against the law, but you can delay by insisting on doing it with an attorney (who would confirm that), and in any case refuse to say anything on 5th Amendment grounds.

Yes. Yes it is.

Bring a lawyer.

It can never help you to be interviewed without an attorney present. It's probably been seen many times before, but I do enjoy this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

IANAL, but note that you need to specifically state you are invoking your right to not talk to them. There have been several cases where just silence was interpreted as incriminating.

The government has the burden to prove that the defendant knew about the reporting requirement and intended to evade it... this is quite unlike many of the regulatory crimes that can ensnare the unsophisticated.

So this is a situation where ignorance of the law does excuse violating it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

Part of the purpose of laws is to act as a deterrent. This can't happen if people are ignorant of them.

I have an extremely difficult time believing that a past member of the legislative branch of the government is unaware of a law. That's your job. To know the law.

But if so, it just shows that there are way too many laws.

No, it's his job to write the law. But...

Too many 2000-page bills. Too many "you have to pass it to know what's in it" bills. They can write it, and still not know what it says. But the hammer should fall on them for that, too, because if they had done a decent job writing it, it wouldn't be so hard to know what it says.

Indeed, the Speaker of the House is arguably the most powerful member of the legislative branch. In the disastrous event that the President and Vice-President die or are otherwise incapacitated, the Speaker is next in line to head the government. In his or her legislative capacity, the Speaker also wields a vast amount of power, (largely) deciding which legislation comes up for debate or vote, and what sort of practices are acceptable in the legislative chamber.

Yea I'm a nobody and I know about over 10,000 dollar transaction reports. Anyone with actual assets sure should

Well a load of Journalists in the UK got of with the argument that they didn't know that bribing police officers/civil service wasn't illegal.

Of course the ones who got paid are doing 3 years in jail (and will probably lose all their pensions) whist the hacks got off scott free

Not necessarily. The purpose of some laws are entrapment, getting the ability to harass, prosecute, or in general make life difficult for certain people. Some function as catch-alls to be able to slap arbitrarily high number of charges onto someone.

It's not illegal to make repeated cash transactions less than $10,000.

It's illegal to make repeated cash transactions less than $10,000 with the intent to evade the reporting requirements.

So if you are not aware of the reporting requirements it is very unlikely that you are violating the law (you certainly aren't violating the reasonable spirit of the law, you may not escape prosecution...).

In other words the crime is the intent, so it's impossible to commit the crime without the intent! (Unlike the prototypical crime which is the act)

I'm pretty sure they only bother prosecuting cases where the act is committed.

I don't think it is so far away from other crimes where intent is evaluated (like murder vs manslaughter).

They've certainly been doing it without evidence of intent. It's been a huge deal. http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/washingtonbureau/2015...

The first business mentioned in that article certainly did structure their transactions with the intent of avoiding reporting regulations, under the advice of their accountant:

Convenience-store distribution is a cash-intensive business, and Hirsch said his accountant advised him that he should keep the company's deposits below $10,000 because banks didn't like the paperwork involved with Currency Transaction Reports.

The article states But there was no evidence of criminal activity, not that there was no evidence of intent (as the section I quoted makes clear, the intent was obvious).

Please note that I'm not making statements in favor of the law in these comments, just characterizing the facts as I see them.

ETA: as I keep reading, the second business was also intentionally avoiding the reporting requirements (after a teller told them how). The third one does not directly state that they were trying to avoid the reporting requirements.

No, many other crimes have a mens rea requirement.

You're wrong. The US courts weigh nearly always weigh intent unusually highly, compared to the rest of the world.

It's not about knowledge of the law, it's about intent.

Ignorance is not an excuse, but it can diminish the crime if the crime is defined in a way that requires intent.

For example, intent can be the difference between murder ("first degree" to Americans) and recklessly causing someone to die. If you poison someone's food and they die, it's murder. If you unwittingly poisoned the food, it's not, but you may be held accountable for a different crime (i.e. recklessness that resulted in death).

This distinction is okay. In fact I'd argue it's expected.

EDIT: Heck, if intent were irrelevant, it'd even be legal to plan to kill or harm people as long as you don't fully follow through. If you caught a terrorist before the act, you'd have to let them go because they haven't yet actually harmed anyone.

Heck, if intent were irrelevant, it'd even be legal to plan to kill or harm people as long as you don't fully follow through. If you caught a terrorist before the act, you'd have to let them go because they haven't yet actually harmed anyone.

(IANAL, and these questions are meant only to incite thought or details (if anyone has any))

Is the state of being a terrorist the act of terrorizing or the thought of doing something that is terrorizing? If it's the latter, how is that different than a thought crime? Even if it's planned, but never executed, is one a terrorist? How does one distinguish between having planned but never intending to execute vs having planned but didn't get around to execute? Is a plan that is never executed a failed plan? There is a distinction between "murder" and "conspiracy to commit murder", the former being the act and the latter being participation in the planning.

If the actor attempts to terrorize and no one is actually terrorized, has an act of terrorism been committed?

If a program is designed, but never written, is it software? If a program is written, but never executed, is it software?

I think the difference lies in the planning. Sure, you can think "wow if I blew this place up it'd really mess things up here", but if you think that and then set out to buy fertilizer and an suv, that's obviously a lot more actionable than a "thought crime".

The law doesn't punish people who have drastic thoughts, it punishes people who have drastic thoughts and then bring them up to associates as something not so drastic.

I dunno, that's the difference to me

> The law doesn't punish people who have drastic thoughts, it punishes people who have drastic thoughts and then bring them up to associates as something not so drastic.

US law maybe. UK law is moving in a different direction... More towards punishing people whom are accused of having drastic thoughts. Citation - read the pre-election manifesto of the new UK government.

There are two laws/rules in question.

A. Transactions above $10,000 must be reported by the bank.

B. Bank customers can't structure withdrawals deliberately to evade the reporting requirement.

Ignorance of the reporting law de facto means that you haven't violated the evasion law. You can't deliberately evade something you know nothing about.

In my opinion ignorance should be allowed. Unless: there was a conflict (which would require you to figure out what is the law on the subject); you endangered someone; clear cases of don't do to other what you don't want done to you. It's even impossible to know the law, how can any SANE person request to do the impossible ?

Yes. There are many other laws where that is the case. Part of the idea is that if you do something wrong because you think it's legal... well you still should have known it was wrong.

With this law, the actual "wrong thing" is trying to avoid the reporting requirement. If you just happen to need $8000 every week, then you aren't trying to avoid the reporting requirement, so you haven't violated the law.

I enjoy contemplating the nuts and bolts of these laws with respect to what exactly would be allowed and what would not.

For example, if I were to withdraw $15k every friday and re-deposit it every monday under the guise that I want it available for gambling over the weekend, that would raise a flag, but it's easily explainable. Would it be considered "structuring" if I did this for a while just to establish a pattern, or is it only structuring if you're trying to avoid triggering a report?

If the $15k occasionally didn't show up on monday, would I then need to come up with another explanation (e.g. "I lost")? Would it fly if I were actually paying this to a friend by way of intentionally losing to him in a private card room?

Structuring is withdrawing cash in under 10k increments to avoid the automatic reports that occur over 10k. You wouldn't be in trouble for structuring for withdrawing 15k every week, because you would trigger a CTR every week. More accurately twice a week if you re-deposited the cash. There is nothing inherently illegal in generating CTRs, or withdrawing cash over $10k.

You overestimate the amount of attention paid to CTRs. There are people and cash heavy businesses that trigger CTRs all the time. The reporting requirement is a fixed dollar amount that hasn't been adjusted since 1970. From a law enforcement standpoint CTRs are spam.

The way to generate attention is by trying to avoid CTRs or the equivalent rules for cashiers checks and money orders (MIL). That will get you a SAR. Those might get investigated if you generate a few of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act

Actually, based on reading that wikipedia article and the related one on "structuring", it's not clear to me that the scenario I described couldn't be argued to be structuring. The relevant quote is that you may not structure transactions "for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements of section 5313 (a) or 5325 or any regulation prescribed under any such section," and my proposed scheme is designed not to avoid the CTR but rather the Suspicious Activity Report. So I think it's arguable that they could nail me for structuring.

This is why, if you ever want to extort money from someone, you have your lawyer talk to their lawyer first. I'm sure they could have set up an LLC for the extortionist/victim to perform "market research" or something.

And don't forget the income tax; according to the article, even extortion must be taxed as per the Supreme Court, 1952.

I've always enjoyed the specification in the instructions for the 1040 form that you must include all sources of income, including illegal income! (Of course, famously, it was on this count that they got Capone.)

Surely that was obviated by Haynes v. U.S., no?

Yes, of course ;)

But seriously, let's say that I'm being blackmailed, and that it's about something that's either not illegal, or where statute of limitations has run out. Can't I just talk to my lawyer, and work out a payment system that doesn't flag me for money laundering?

Absolutely. I don't understand why Hastert didn't just have his lawyer set up a trust of some sort. There are so many ways to do this without attracting attention that it's not funny.

Right. For example, late Senator Strom Thurmond discreetly supported his illegitimate daughter Essie Mae.[0] Her mother was only 16 years old when impregnated. I am not even implying that blackmail was involved, by the way.

[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/essie-mae-on-strom-thurmond/

Is paying hush money illegal? This is essentially how no-competes and NDAs work sometimes. An employer offers you some amount of your salary on exit, and asks you to sign a document agreeing not to disclose things you learned there.

Further, while I am aware that transactions above 10K are flagged, so what? If you have paid taxes on the money, you can do what you want with it. IANAL but I think you can withdraw any amount, it is just flagged and reported by the teller.

No, I don't believe it's necessarily illegal to pay someone "hush money" (though it probably depends! laws are awfully vague). I do believe it's illegal to demand to be paid "hush money", though, normally referred to as "blackmail".

Presumably the reason the accused used structuring, even if a "hush money" payment itself was legal, was that they would have had to explain why they were making such a large withdrawal -- which doesn't really help for keeping things "hushed".

> I do believe it's illegal to demand to be paid "hush money", though, normally referred to as "blackmail".

Depends on the jurisdiction. If the act being covered up is illegal, then someone knowing about it is obligated to report it or be an accomplice after the fact, regardless of money changing hands. On the other hand, if the act being covered up is not illegal, merely embarrassing (classic example: an extramarital affair), then it would depend on whether blackmail itself is a crime in itself or only an extension of some other crime.

The description at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail would suggest that, in the US, blackmail would be a crime only when some other crime is being covered up. I don't know if that's accurate or complete.

It's illegal if the hush money is being paid to cover up a crime, or other illegal activity.

My biggest gripe with this law has to do with the fact that the limit hasn't changed in at least 22 years. I remember learning about this law when I worked as a bank teller one summer. $10K isn't what it used to be.

The "Know Your Customer" rules actually encourage reporting of transactions in the $2500 dollar range, which is even less.

Source: drinking buddy who was VP of local bank and handled regulatory compliance

Yea that's nothing. Probably wouldn't even get you a pound of weed.

It is kind of ridiculous. Per the article:

>$10,000 today is equivalent to just $1,640 in 1970 dollars

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Bitcoin yet -- which like him or not, would have made this man's life much easier and more private.

I'm not sure how using Bitcoins would have helped. He could have easily purchased Bitcoins. But using them to anonymously pay his blackmailer(s) would have been nontrivial. Even if he had known how, or had advice from someone who did, I suspect that he'd have been pushing the limits of most mixing services. Also, the US classifies Bitcoins as capital investments. And so he would have had to report gains and losses in his income tax returns.

true, but the 10k withdrawal would have been a non-issue.

I don't think so.

Consider that I want to discreetly give someone $80K. If I withdraw $80K, the bank must report that. But if I withdraw 10x $8K, I'm arguably structuring to avoid reporting. So let's say that I want to buy $80K of Bitcoins. If I do that in one $80K transfer, the bank must report that. And with 10x $8K, I'm still structuring. And either way, in that year's tax return, I'll need to report capital gains and losses on the $80K of Bitcoins.

You wouldn't have to report capital gains unless you had sold the asset. But transferring the asset to your blackmailer, perhaps you might have to pay gift tax, unless you filed a 1099. [1]

[1] http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employ...

I'm not very familiar with US tax law. But the key point, I think, is that once I have that $80K Bitcoin asset, the reporting requirements for it will be comparable to those for $80K in my bank.

Bitcoin only helps if I can buy those Bitcoins without reporting. So I'm in the same situation as accumulating cash to send via DHL or whatever.

If the law was [automatically] adjusted with/for inflation, the original $10,000 limit would be $60,000 today.

This situation itself is pretty straightforward, Hastert was clearly structuring, and, odds are, the person he sent the money to didn't pay taxes on the money he got from Hastert, which itself is a crime, and finally, he lied about it to the FBI, also a crime. So, three clear crimes here, one of which committed by a third party.

So many things in life are "grey" - this one is pretty straightforward, and Hastert would have known that what he was doing was wrong. The news coming out today strongly suggests that he had a good incentive to commit these crimes to hide evidence of even greater wrongdoing.

Hmm, how is blackmail money classified? Gifts are not taxable by the recipient, but if you're being blackmailed, it hardly sounds like you're making a gift. Similarly, insurance money that "makes you whole" is not taxed, and in this case the money kind of sounded like restitution for abuse.

I'm genuinely curious how this money would be treated by the IRS.

Payment in exchange for silence? Ordinary income maybe?

Money from blackmail, otherwise known as extortion, is most certainly taxable by the IRS: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Federal-Statutes---Money-Laundering

So the offense is, essentially, not arranging your affairs in a way so as to leave them open to easy scrutiny by the state. With decades of precedent allowing such laws how can strong cryptography possibly be permissible?

No, the essence of the offense is to be aware of a certain type of scrutiny and arrange your affairs specifically to avoid it.

Actually, some people here will argue that, in fact, the state HAS an inherent power to inspect anything at all. Math and physics be damned.

I don't understand why that is an actually.

The financial reporting regulations surrounding structuring are pretty specific, it really isn't the sort of thing you would use as a salvo in a war to inspect everything.

No, it isn't. But some people think the Hobbesian PoV means outlawing strong encryption is exactly what the government should do.

This problem should be tackled at the root. The reporting law (report transactions >10K is antiquated). The federal government can set up other ways of finding "interesting" transaction patterns that have nothing to do with a specific threshold that continually lowers in real value due to inflation.

Drop the 10K reporting requirement and there is no need a structuring law except as a way to "get" people that they can not "get" in another way.

And powerful people in the gov/banking complex want to abandon cash. Great marketing.

It is not about marketing, it is about control.

I understand your point, but the money laundering laws and the abandoning of cash all leads into one direction: The government shall be in control, who uses money and for what reason.

As much I sympathize with the need to control money laundering and tax avoiding, I fear that our basic freedom rights are in grave danger. When I have to ask the government, before I can buy a car (with cash ... at least in Europe it is still normal to buy used cars from private people with cash) or have to fear the grip of the FBI, because I am reported by the bank, my freedom rights are hurt.

Also there where even small merchants accused, since they put sums <$10.000 repeatedly in their account. Something that is normal, when you earn <$10.000 in cash during the weak and empty your cash box at the end of week.

Don't make your whole population into offenders, because you want to prosecute some crimes!

It's easy to see how you might interpret my snarky comment that way, but I agree with what you said about control except I would go further. I think people should be able to do whatever they like with their money (and what they decide is money), no government involvement whatsoever. Taxes are theft. If the gov "needs" our property, they should make the case; and if someone agrees, they can donate.

I did think, that your comment was mostly ironical.

I also know this thinking, that taxes are theft. But that is just one viewpoint. The other is, that taxes help to build a community, to build infrastructure, to build the internet ... (remember: the internet started as military network). Taxes are necessary, to help those that are weak and have not so much possibilities in life. To help those, that can not buy their schooling ... Before (gov. funded) public schooling was started, reading and writing was a privilege of less than 10% of the society. I would even go as far, that many of our today's achievements are because of taxes (only taking schools into account). Without public schools, we might have still steam machines. The fast successes of science are because so many people have access to education.

Even you and me might be still life in some underprivileged village and reap noggins without (tax paid) public schooling.

Sure they help build community, but paradigms change. There might be a better way. If a 1/3 of middle class income wasn't stolen and wasted bombing the manufactured enemy of the week or propping up corrupt banks, it's possible that even more would be spent on community. People like to give, but put under financial pressure, it's the first thing to stop. The real problem is this idea that it's ok to use violence to take someone elses property. It's a fundamental structural flaw, an asymmetry that undermines the rule of law by making it legal to steal if you have the right title.

I run a business and regularly withdraw > $10k per month as salary. The bank reports these routine transactions to the government every month? And if I decide in the future that things aren't going so well and need to cut my pay down to $9k or so, I might get charged with structuring, despite the fact that I am not using the money in any illegal way?

This case is why I believe it's pointless to try to protect your privacy: even if you just withdraw < $10,000 to avoid notice, you've committed a crime. But, if you withdraw more than $10k all the time (then deposit it back in) you haven't committed a crime and that $10k you needed for hush money gets lost in the noise.

From the unfortunately dead post of TEMPLEOS_DEV

They don't have to. Structuring transactions to avoid reporting laws is also a crime. Periodic withdrawals of $9,999 won't save you.

What's up with that shadow banning?

Explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308017

I believe that particular account is someone else pretending to be Terry, which (if true) is an obnoxious thing to do. We unkilled this one comment because it was unobjectionable (and in fact did so before seeing this subthread), but I'm not unbanning the account.

Soon users will be able to unkill comments on a case-by-case basis [1], which I hope will render superfluous the tedious genre of shadowban outrage subthread.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9318675

Thanks for the clarification Dan, as well as this feature improvement.

That's what you get when you elect socialists, statists. They will decided what you can do with your own money. Why does any government asshole get to decide how, what, how much you withdrawl from your own money.

You leftists better fucking wake up. You are the cause of this.

How about when it's from your bank but from someone else's account? I think that satisfies the crime predicate :)

Let's examine this law via the perspective of speed limits.

In the US, most interstate highway systems have a speed limit of 70 miles/hour (around 112-113 km/hour). If you go over 70 mph and run into a police officer having a bad day, you'll get a ticket.

Say you're on a particular stretch of interstate which is populated by officers with a reputation of consistently coming after drivers traveling even 1 mph over the limit (eg 71 mph).

So, to err on the side of caution, you limit your driving to between 65 and 69 mph.

You're driving along at 65-69 mph thinking all is well in the world, when the flashing lights appear behind you. You pull over, the officer comes up, and The Question comes out: "Is there a problem officer?"

The officer looks you over and asks "Do you know how fast you were going?"

You get a puzzled look on your face. "Well, I couldn't have been speeding. I know you guys are pretty strict about speeding around here, so I set the cruise control right at 67 mph."

"So you know that speeding around here will get you a ticket, and you intentionally kept your speed below the speed limit?"

"Yes sir."

"Well, I'll need you to step out of the car please."

"Um sure, but why?"

"We have an anti-evasion law around here which makes it illegal for you to knowingly and intentionally go below the speed limit in order to avoid the possibility of going over and getting a ticket. The penalty is 30 days in jail vs the $100 speeding ticket. Since you admitted to intentionally going under the speed limit, I'm placing you under arrest."

Insanity, I tell you.

The problem with your analogy is that the reporting requirements are not analogous to a speed limit.

The intent of a speed limit is to increase safety by, uh, limiting speeds.

The intent of the financial reporting laws is to limit money laundering by tracking the movement of large amounts of cash (and other negotiable instruments).

So back to the analogy, going below the speed limit is a way of following the rules. Making transactions below the reporting limit in order to avoid the reporting is not a way of following the rules (it's an explicit attempt to avoid them).

I guess you might be able to find a bank that would help you report transactions that are below the $10,000 limit (which would be an act that is more analogous to staying below the speed limit).

The metaphor is not apt. There would be nothing wrong with him withdrawing $32,000, nor with him withdrawing $8,000. The crime was withdrawing $32,000 while evading the reporting requirements. It's not remotely the same as staying under a speed limit.

Not to mention lying to the FBI about it. It's not the crime that'll get you, it's the coverup.

A better analogy - Let us say you know there are set locations (speed traps) where, if you are caught going over 70 MPH, you are given a speeding ticket. But, you still want to go fast. So, in order to avoid the speed traps, you drive 100 MPH between the speed traps, and then slow down to 70 MPH (or just under) when you get to the speed traps.

The difference is that the law doesn't regard reporting as a punishment/hardship, so it's not a darned if you do / darned if you don't situation in the eyes of the law.

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