Operators of Cryptocurrency Mixers Charged with Money Laundering \ stacker news ~Politics_And

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Operators of Cryptocurrency Mixers Charged with Money Laundering www.justice.gov/opa/pr/operators-cryptocurrency-mixers-charged-money-laundering

430 sats \ 21 comments \ @k00b 10 Jan Politics_And_Law

A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Georgia returned an indictment on Jan. 7 charging three Russian nationals for their involvement in operating the cryptocurrency mixing services Blender.io and Sinbad.io.

Can someone explain this? Juries are needed for indictments? I had imagined a regulatory body just petitioned a judge for an indictment.

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236 sats \ 12 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

I went on my little rant without answering your question. Yes, indictments are required to try a defendant on felony charges in US courts. There are two kinds of juries, a grand jury and a petit jury. Grand juries are required to get an indictment. Typically 12 of 23 jurors must vote to indict. It is a closed session and only the prosecution gets to present evidence. Sol Wachtler, a famous court of appeals judge from New York, famously said that a New York grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, or some thing like that. Petit juries are the more familiar trial juries.

41 sats \ 11 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Jan

Thanks! I didn't know civilian juries were involved in other stages of the judicial system. From wikipedia:

Unlike a petit jury, which resolves a particular civil or criminal case, a grand jury (typically having twelve to twenty-three members) serves as a group for a sustained period of time in all or many of the cases that come up in the jurisdiction, generally under the supervision of a federal U.S. attorney, a county district attorney, or a state attorney-general, and hears evidence ex parte (i.e. without suspect or person of interest involvement in the proceedings).

On the face of it this sounds great to have sieves of civilians preventing bogus indictments, but as you say, "only the prosecution presents":

They are rarely read any instruction on the law, as this is not a requirement; their job is only to judge on what the prosecutor produced.

I suppose it mostly prevents supremely incompetent indictments from proceeding. Otherwise, they must mostly pass through. Oh! It says this explicitly in the history section:

The grand jury served to screen out incompetent or malicious prosecutions.

I should learn more about legal theory. As hamstrung as the whole thing seems, there's probably lots of to learn about humans cooperating and contending.

143 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

Once or twice in my career I decided to have my client testify before a grand jury. I was only allowed to sit there as he told his story, then listen to the prosecutor cross examine him. I could not speak. I was only allowed to sit there. It is very unusual to have a defendant testify and waive his right to remain silent, and only done when the defendant is articulate and has a great defense, and when avoiding an indictment is important. It was a dark and scary place. I felt vulnerable, and I'm sure my clients felt worse.

182 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Jan

It has got to feel like hiring a serial killer to babysit your kid.

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

Very much so.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @numbersguy 11 Jan outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.

47 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Jan

I was able to find a few books on law philosophy that cross over with game theory and economics.

I'm most excited about these two:

177 sats \ 5 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

The first one sounds like a classic anarchist take. There's a lot of good stuff like this I read over the years. I'll try to dig up some examples.

41 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Jan

I'm kind of curious about it all. Bad law is probably, for the most part, the wrong solution to the right/correct problem. I'm mostly interested in learning about all the problems law exists to solve.

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

Have you read much of or about this guy:?

http://www.lysanderspooner.org/

41 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 11 Jan

Nope. I've heard the name though. I'll pick up something from him

168 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

This guy is also good:

https://mises.org/library/book/freedom-and-law

reply on another page

41 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 11 Jan

I always look forward to your take on these things.

157 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 11 Jan

I need to spend more time looking into this, but I am just so tired of the self congratulatory tone of these press releases. It's like the academy awards or something. Also, they publicly shred these guys and then stick this at the end:

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law

As if there's anything left of the fucking constitution in this country.

113 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 10 Jan

Prosecutors like to use a grand jury because it is done behind closed doors where as if they do not use one the preliminary hearings are open to the public. Grand jurys also serve as a check against unfounded prosecutions and in my opinion also give prosecutors an idea on if they can get a conviction or not.

Biggest thing is it is done behind closed doors and not publicly esp given that crypto cases have not been received in the media.

20 sats \ 4 replies \ @kepford 10 Jan

So many questions. They are Russian nationals. Were they in the US on visas? Were they arrested in another country? Is the US just the global police that can just pluck a person out of any country and put them in front of judge and then throw them in a dark hole for stuff like this?

If this is true, the world is much darker than most Americans understand and the US is not a good guy.

101 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 10 Jan

We need @siggy47 :)

159 sats \ 2 replies \ @Cje95 10 Jan

Based off of what I am reading it sounds like two of them were in either the US or Finland. Tarasov has not been caught and remains at large.

Where they screwed up was they essentially tried to rebrand Blender.io as Sinbad.io using the same infrastructure which was seized in Finland. Blender had been sanctioned by the US back in 2022 for allowing the Lazarus Group to launder their proceeds from the Axie hack so relaunching it was clearly a crime. Not to mention it was easily traced from what I can tell.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 10 Jan

Thanks

75 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 10 Jan

Honestly it kinda seems like what happened with Silk Road when it was taken down and then an idiot tried to launch Silk Road 2.0 on the same stuff

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 11 Jan

A Grand Jury's job is to determine the charges. (it's a corporate disciplinatory hr board)

A jury of peers job is to determine justice. (in case of harm, theft)

Two different jurisdictions.