[ryanlol]

>Money laundering is a fake crime and propaganda by governments with prosecutors unable to find real crime.

Absolutely true. I'm a convicted money launderer because I once used a chinese bitcoin exchange instead of an European one.

The wires from the Chinese exchange were nothing compared to the EU ones, simply the origin country was enough to justify my conviction.

[ramchip]

But why? Was it dirty money somehow?

[ryanlol]

Nah, I was charged with other crimes (none of which had a financial incentive, according to LE or the courts).

While at it they "subpoenad" my bank account history, saw a bunch of wires from normal European exchanges and then one wire from a Chinese account. Never cared to ask about the European ones (I verified that they didn't ask the exchanges directly either.), but the Chinese one was apparently particularly interesting.

They asked me a few questions, I explained the (legal) source of the money, few years later the thing actually got to court and I was found guilty with the only evidence against me being the country where the funds came from.

Not worth it to appeal, I might get my 6-7k euros back but would probably end up paying more than that for lawyers.

[yorwba]

Can you give more information about the crimes you were charged with?

[ryanlol]

Pretty boring.

50700 counts of aggravated unauthorized access to computer systems for making some scripts to drop a bot on lots of coldfusion site. Incl https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5552756

1 count of the same https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6637426

1 of the same + bonus charge for possibly starting a SMTP server on the domain https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5098218

Credit card fraud for sharing some cards on IRC and unsuccessfully trying to use a few.

Money laundering for receiving a wire of ~6.5k euros from China.

There might be something more, but that's all I can remember for now. Mostly pretty silly things anyway.

[yorwba]

I realize now that I somehow misparsed your comment as saying that you had been charged for other crimes as a result of that transaction, but when rereading it now, the causality is actually in the opposite direction. I guess once they had a solid case for one, they just threw in everything else they found suspicious? Thanks for being so open.

[ryanlol]

>I guess once they had a solid case for one, they just threw in everything else they found suspicious?

Yep, it tends to be an easy extra charge to slap on anyone who isn't keeping very good books.

As MichaelGG said, a fake crime.

[MichaelGG]

Wait, you're HTP Ryan?

[celticninja]

Conviction in the US?

[ryanlol]

The Nordics.