Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by MagicWishMonkey 1761 days ago
Yep, the FBI is unlikely to nail you to the wall for doing something inadvertantly (unless it was really really bad).

A friend of mine is a field agent who spent years prosecuting financial crimes, and a lot of her time was spent knocking on doors and telling people to stop doing stupid stuff. Like one lady in particular was elderly and kept getting taken advantage of by money launderers (people putting cash in her account and telling her to deposit it somewhere else). My friend had to visit her on multiple occasions to explain that she needed to stop doing that.

1 comments

"This is really blatant money laundering? How are you planning on beating the FBI?"

"Seriously? Oh, I'm old and confused and this nice young gentlemen on the telephone called me and said he accidentally put a bunch of money into my account that was supposed to go to his mother. Such a nice boy. Just keep up your side of the deal. If my cut isn't in the Cayman account within the week, then I can guarantee that you won't be worrying about the FBI."

EDIT: Just to be clear. I'm hoping that we don't unknowingly live in a universe where all elderly people are secret underworld mob bosses. However, I'm honestly not sure how you would tell the difference between a sufficiently proficient elderly mob boss and someone who's just old and hasn't kept up with changing trends.

haha, that scenario definitely crossed my mind when I heard about it, but she's not an idiot (my friend) - I assume they had other reasons to think the lady wasn't all there, but I didn't ask.

Prior to working in financial crimes she spent a lot of time dealing with catching drug dealers/smugglers/cartels, which I think is where most agents go to cut their teeth, so she's heard pretty much every ridiculous excuse/justification you can imagine.