
Risks of paying a Freelancer in the Iraq / Kurdistan Region - hackaflocka
Via a website, I&#x27;ve found a programmer living in Iraq &#x2F; Kurdistan. He&#x27;s very good (provably so) and I need him to implement a couple of features in one of my websites.<p>My fear &#x2F; concern is that if and when I pay this person for the work (perhaps via PayPal or BitCoin), I&#x27;ll trigger some flag in some database somewhere, and if any of that money ever ends up in the hands of some enemies of the U.S., then I&#x27;ll be in big trouble (suspected of providing material support to enemies or worse).<p>The situation is further complicated by the fact that I&#x27;m a permanent resident of the U.S. and intend to apply for citizenship next year.<p>Got any advice? I&#x27;ll be monitoring this thread and responding to your need for clarifications.
======
JayNeely
I really doubt this would ever be an issue. Would you have any reason to
believe this programmer is directly associated with enemies of the US? If not,
a totally indirect chain of payments doesn't put you on the hook for anything;
just think about all the hops the money in your PayPal account went through to
get there. And also that money (with Bitcoin being a sort-of exception) is a
fluid amalgamation that gets split up and reconstituted from different pieces
all the time.

Absolute worst case (supremely unlikely) scenario, some chain of transactions
does cause a flag to be raised -- you wouldn't be silently condemned. It would
be investigated; that's why they'd be flagging transactions in the first
place. And they'd see from the context (or if it ever came to someone actually
calling and asking) that it's a legitimate payment for services rendered. Just
like millions of other payments to out-of-country developers.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Have you considered asking an attorney?

