Saw this news article pop up on my news feed. Apparently this type of situation (laundering, crypto, Pokémon) does exist haha.
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Good taste in the items he bought with the stolen funds! Now he can work for .37/hour for his commissary. Enjoy your best years in the pokey, flyboy
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Man, why didn’t I think of doing that? Spending other people’s money seems way easier than spending my own.
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This is interesting, thanks for sharing. Gives some insight into some of the forces that are at play. Thinking about his motivations, he’d want as many steps in between the money and what goes to him. AI suggested that he used a broker to purchase from HA and paid the broker in crypto. If he then cracked and regraded, it would be hard to trace the sale. Given that, the moon landing patch doesn’t make much sense though. Anyway, obviously it didn’t work in the long run! Hopefully a cautionary tale to others. Stealing 50M in crypto is a lot of people’s life savings, stolen for basically no reason in the end.
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He had $31m leftover. Should have just bribed Trump for a pardon.
Why are crypto companies and holders relying on the government to enforce the law though? I thought they hated government.
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I’d like to imagine it went something like this
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Thanks for posting that link. Wild to see mention of “Pokemon” on an official government website.
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That’s not laundering lol. Guy was just a fan of that stuff according to his own words prior to getting caught. And he got caught precisely because he was such a dumbass to buy this stuff with doxxed onchain money. He thought one round of tornado mixing was sufficent, with that kind of size, ergo a total amateur. Autistic enough to be able to hack pools, 0 common sense, logic & “street smarts” for anything else.
If your take from this is that these are the drivers pumping the market you are badly mistaken. Graded pokemon is one of the absolute worst tools to launder illcit money
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- steal a buncha cryptos
- pay for ur pokemans using cryptos
- resell ur pokemans for real monies ← he didnt get to this step
- ???
- money laundry
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Maybe because the government is happy to tax any crypto gains? The crypto people are paying them well to work
I wonder why? Maybe because it is inherently risky as fuck to buy cards doxxed with stolen tainted money
& You really think the IRS won’t investigate you deeply if you if you sell 50M$ worth of cards out of nowhere?
He could have for example just bought gold instead (through mules, after proper mixing) and gold you can melt, gold you could have inherited from your grandmother, gold is universally more liquid, gold has no certs. Each cert has a history, it is way harder to larp up a tale. Gold has no history. It is fungible.
I mean that idea is retarded too but i am illustrating how much more retarded cards are
Something about performing a reverse engineering digital money heist in order to buy rare ancient greek coins is just chefs kiss. Free my boy Spalletta.
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This case looks like very obvious money laundering to me. I’m not surprised if he said he’s “just a fan of that stuff”, if the alternative would be to say outright that he’s laundering money.
The benefit to him would be that he can sell some of the collectibles for cash (crack and regrade to hide it), or can hide them physically so they can’t be confiscated like a bank account can be.
I agree that money laundering is not the main driver pushing up the market. Most of it is natural. I don’t think things like this are a large contributor. Many people claiming that big sales are money laundering are underestimating how much money some people have. But let’s call a spade a spade, this case IS money laundering.
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If you read the article you’ll see that he did this 5 years ago for 2021 prices. It’s a one-off and he got caught. Not a systemic explanation for the prices we see today
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Today there is probably way more fraud money (not just stolen crypto) getting pumped into pokemon at the moment than anyone realizes. Luxury watches, art, rare usernames, pokemon cards, etc.
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Thought about it just yesterday, glad it’s not a crime to sell to these people.
Nobody has offered to buy my username
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