

E-Gold founders avoid jail thanks to great judge - pelle
http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/11/25/e-gold-founders-avoid-jail

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josefresco
They always throw the old "child pron" line into these stories to gain public
support.

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tsally
It's sad that we get so excited when our justice system works; it should be a
matter of course.

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Devilboy
This really sucks. e-gold is a great service and this judgement will only mean
that competitors that do not have operations in the USA will take over.

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ars
Maybe they were innovative, but at the end of the day their service was
frequently used to launder money.

They also violated the law about know your customer (banks must know who each
of their customers are, no anonymous customers).

Sorry, but if you run a business you have to obey the law, not just ignore it.

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pelle
Their legal counsel had advised them that they were not a money transfer
business and not required to do so.

They had also been in business successfully for years before the patriot act
passed.

I also hardly think you could say that they directly ignored it as they had
actually been disputing that they were under Fincen regulations for several
years and not just sitting back hoping for the best.

Whether you agree with their analysis is up to you. I think it was probably
not a battle worth fighting.

Their service was undoubtably used for money laundering, but mainly for
smaller criminals and fraudsters. The same could be said for craigslist,
paypal, ebay and even google.

Over the years money laundering has become code for tax avoidance, online
gaming and dubious investment schemes. By using that term the DOJ make it
sound like it was used by major criminal organizations. It wasn't.

Real large scale money laundering is done most often through real estate, fake
invoices between cover businesses and use existing banks complete with know
your customer compliance.

For more on how this is done: <http://econotrix.com/archives/000524.html>

