[austincheney]

Laundering is any process to legitimize illicit income. It does not matter who owns the coins or other assets in question. What matters is if the coins represent any vehicle of fund transfer that originate from any form of criminal enterprise or other unreported financial activity.

[vmception]

which is why they weren't charged with actual money laundering. they only got them with conspiracy which is a super weak charge.

a money laundering charge requires an illicit origin, which means it can only be a tacked on charge after charging or proving someone was involved in the illegal activity.

the government just doesn't know, they just find everything this couple did to be super suspicious. they clearly had control of an excessive amount of cryptocurrency that they were reintegrating into the economy. the government doesn't seem to know if they were actually involved in the heist, or how, or to what extent.

simply obfuscating money isn't illegal. obfuscating an illicit origin is. lets see if the government can get to the bottom of this "conspiracy to obfuscate money of an illicit origin".

[acchow]

So they could have reported the stolen coins it as income, paid taxes, and they'd be in the clear?

[dvt]

How are you arriving to this conclusion? Paying taxes on illicit income does not make the income non-illicit. It just makes you easier to catch.

[acchow]

I was replying under some comment thread about the the government "not legitimizing" bitcoin, and thus not considering "bitcoin theft" to be actual theft.

And thus the only crime here being tax evasion.