
Ex-U.S. Agent Charged with Bitcoin Theft to Plead Guilty - prostoalex
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/20930/ex-u-s-agent-charged-bitcoin-theft-plead-guilty/
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emilburzo
Someone should make a movie out of the whole bitcoin story.

I haven't seen so many plot twists in a long time (this, mtgox, etc)

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omouse
Yes you have; Goldman Sachs, the big bank bailout, subprime mortgages, etc.
Bitcoin's story is peanuts compared to the financial crash in 2008.

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bottled_poe
But that is business as usual... This is biz 2.0!

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Eleopteryx
I feel like you're being sarcastic, but on some level that's a reasonable
point.

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mc_hammer
yea but watch the sentencing... and compare the sentence given to aaron
schwartz... downloading medical journals versus corruption and racketeering,
betraying his oath, on duty federal officer lying, stealing, forging
documents, and tax evading...

i bet this corrupt officer doesnt get 30+ years

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rwmj
We don't know what sentence Aaron Swartz would have got.

Edit: Swartz was offered a 6 month sentence as a plea bargain, but turned it
down, so if the cop gets more than 6 months you could (in some sense) say he
is being punished more than Swartz.

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mc_hammer
i read that too, but not until now, what! he should have taken the deal.
6months on 13 federal charges!

if he didnt accept the plea he was facing up to 30+ years.

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tptacek
No, he was not. His own attorney said that it was likely that even if
convicted on all charges, he might have received no custodial sentence. The
"30 year" number is an entirely fictitious "whale sushi" PR stunt by the DOJ.

[http://popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-
ele...](http://popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-
million-years/)

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mc_hammer
yes he was. note i said "up to" in my post. and on top of that he was linked
to political activism, which tends to get the judge to throw the book at you
(ala Jullian Assange, Wesley Snipes, and many more).

from his wiki page

On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment
adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal
exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines.

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tptacek
This is simply not how federal sentencing works. You don't add up all the
sentences from all the charges and then serve them back to back.

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dragonwriter
Well, that _is_ how the _upper bound_ of federal sentencing works.

It is just extremely unusual for the imposed sentence to be at the upper
bound, due to a number of factors, particularly the federal sentencing
guidelines (though upward departures from the guidelines are possible, and may
reach anything up to the upper bound -- that's why it is an upper bound.)

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tptacek
In the history of computer crime, has a judge ever departed from the grouping
guidelines of the CFAA and wire fraud laws?

Also: do you agree with the commenter upthread who is loudly asserting that
Swartz faced 30-50 years for scraping JSTOR?

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dragonwriter
> In the history of computer crime, has a judge ever departed from the
> grouping guidelines of the CFAA and wire fraud laws?

Not that I am aware of, but I wouldn't necessarily expect to be aware of it
unless it also happened to be a very high profile case (also, the history of
the guidelines being held to be discretionary rather than mandatory is much
shorter than the "entire history of computer crime" \-- _U.S. v. Booker_ ,
which held that the provisions making the guidelines mandatory was a violation
of the Sixth Amendment, was only decided in _2005_.)

> Also: do you agree with the commenter upthread who is loudly asserting that
> Swartz faced 30-50 years for scraping JSTOR?

With the "up to" language presented, AFAICT the 30-50 year range is accurate
in that the upper bound is within that range (35 years being apparently more
precisely accurate, from what I can find.)

Of course, it would not seem likely that the _actual_ sentence would have been
anywhere near the upper bound, but it was the maximum legally possible
sentence. So the statement is correct, though quite likely misleading without
understanding how federal sentencing works in practice.

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tptacek
You're being evasive. His meaning is clear. For instance, in his most recent
comment, he suggested that Swartz's political activism made the longer
sentence likely. He was not merely spelling out the technicality that the
judge could depart from the guidelines and issue an absurd sentence. He was
strongly implying that the 30-50 year sentence DOJ bragged about was anchored
in reality.

Do you agree with him? Do you actually believe Swartz and his attorney
reasonably believed he faced 30-50 years? When we consider Swartz's
predicament, or really the predicament of anyone faced with federal charges,
should we assume that sentences will not group, regardless of what the
guidelines say? Is the "30 years" top-line sentence useful to our discussion?

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dragonwriter
> You're being evasive.

No, I'm not. I directly answered both as to the accuracy of the "up to"
statement (stating that that statement is, stricly speaking, accurate) and its
likely relevance to actual sentencing (stating also that is misleading in the
absence of an understanding of how federal sentencing works.)

> For instance, in his most recent comment, he suggested that Swartz's
> political activism made the longer sentence likely.

That's a different claim than the one you asked me if I agreed with. FWIW,
I've done no study myself and aware of none that gives any basis for saying
what effect, if any, political activism has on sentencing decisions (my
intuition is that crimes related motivated by it probably are correlated with
a lack of remorse shown and negatively correlated with factors -- both within
the guidelines and that judges are likely to apply in considering outside the
guidelines -- that favor mitigation of sentences, so the idea that it does
lead to greater sentences is intuitively plausible.)

> He was strongly implying that the 30-50 year sentence DOJ bragged about was
> anchored in reality.

And I directly addressed the connection between that and reality.

> Do you agree with him?

Asked and answered. Repeatedly, at this point.

> When we consider Swartz's predicament, or really the predicament of anyone
> faced with federal charges, should we assume that sentences will not group,
> regardless of what the guidelines say?

We should assume that there is the potential for that to occur, yes,
_particularly_ if we are the ones facing them. Any other assumption in a post-
_Booker_ world is imprudent.

As to the _likelihood_ of upward departures, what assumptions we should make
depends on the available information we have on cases that are similar, and
what judges have done and appeals courts have allowed or not in the way of
upward departures. But the history of the guidelines being advisory is short,
and in many cases there aren't much in the way of similar cases from which to
form much of a judgement about that probability.

> Is the "30 years" top-line sentence useful to our discussion?

I don't think raising the Swartz case (upper-bound sentence or otherwise) is
particularly useful in the context of the Bitcoin case.

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tptacek
I'm curious why you're putting so much rhetorical energy into not giving a
simple answer. I'll be blunt: I do not believe that _you_ believe that there
was any possibility Swartz could have received a 30 year sentence, or even a
10 year sentence.

In fact: since you seem to be a kind of nerd that is very similar to the kind
I am, I'll bet you've actually read the relevant sentencing guidelines --- not
just the table, but the big document that lists all the criteria that add
points to CFAA and wire fraud charges. If I had to guess about what's in your
mind, I'd guess you agree with me: the prosecution's threatened 7 year
sentence was also mostly bluster.

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beaner
I wonder what the plea bargain is.

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ExpiredLink
Don't they usually drop the heaviest charge?

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leugim
MtGox... he nailed it.

