[HN Gopher] How the government set up a fake bank to launder dru...
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How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)
Author : mdeck_
Score : 183 points
Date : 2021-06-08 12:29 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| [deleted]
| pxlt wrote:
| Similar to this story that broke today, where the FBI secretly
| ran an 'encrypted' messaging network as a two-year sting
| operation
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/8/22524307/anom-encrypted-me...
| chrispai wrote:
| With the technology growing, some criminals might exploit
| cryptocurrency and use Monero to launder money.
| ptsneves wrote:
| I always wonder how this is legal in the U.S.A? Creating a fake
| bank in another country sounds like committing fraud in another
| country. At worst it can be they would be charged with money
| laundering themselves.
|
| What is the line of what is acceptable at entrapment in the
| United States? What stops any agency from creating permanent fake
| banks for example?
|
| I am glad drug lords get busted. I hate them, but I think if
| there is no line, then we do not need any kind of law. Just
| declare drug traffickers as not human and exterminate them. I do
| not think the outcome would be good.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's legal because the law doesn't explicitly forbid it, I
| guess? Legality is a very flexible thing. Morality is another,
| but not necessarily the same.
|
| Anyway, generally speaking, law enforcement is granted things
| that citizens do not, e.g. visibly wearing weapons, owning and
| transporting narcotics, etc. But those things are obvious.
|
| Your last bit is very totalitarian, and I would have hoped we
| had intellectually grown beyond that.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Morality is totally flexible too, all you need to do to
| justify your atrocity is to make it help kids in some small
| way
| gjvnq wrote:
| Interestingly, the principal of _legality_ in Brazil has two
| different meanings:
|
| 1. For regular people, it mean that they can do whatever the
| law doesn't forbid. 2. For public officials, it means they
| can only do what the law allows.
|
| Source:
| https://www.migalhas.com.br/amp/depeso/302660/principio-
| da-l...
| wil421 wrote:
| If the government setup their own Silk Road and busted a bunch
| of drug dealers it wouldn't be any different than starting a
| bank. The first informant said I have drug traffickers asking
| for banking services. They setup what they were already
| seeking.
|
| Most likely a few governments and courts in multiple countries
| were already OK with it by the end.
| vmception wrote:
| Yeah, just a heads up that darknet commerce goes much darker
| after every enforcement action.
|
| More of it switches to Monero despite being less convenient,
| debilitating tracing capabilities.
|
| It accelerated need for completion of Monero multisignature
| capabilities, allowing the custody of funds to remain with
| the buyer and seller, instead of requiring the exchange as an
| escrow provider which is where many of the funds are seized
| when the government finds a server and takes it down.
|
| Buyers and sellers do their own encryption handshakes based
| on certain software protocols. Instead of all messages stored
| on the marketplace server. And they avoid certain apps like
| Wickr.
|
| The effort to take down a marketplace increases while the
| yield decreases. Classic war of attrition.
|
| Everyone already knows the best practices, they are just too
| lazy to implement them until there is evidence that it's
| necessary and not just paranoia.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Of course, but these patterns are true of most businesses
| (and indeed much human behavior). Companies have policies
| planned exceeding implementation because the cost isn't
| justified (until it is).
|
| ... and "enforcing the law incentivizes criminals to spend
| more on not getting caught" isn't really an argument for
| not enforcing the law. Indeed, from the point of view of
| law enforcement, it's short-term win-win... Every resource
| spent on being harder to catch is a resource not spent on
| the actual harmful criminal activity.
| vmception wrote:
| These are not hard best practices.
| nomoreplease wrote:
| > If the government setup their own Silk Road and busted a
| bunch of drug dealers it wouldn't be any different than
| starting a bank.
|
| Silk road was e-commerce. The laws & regulations of
| e-commerce and banking are very different, so yes they would
| different. Doubly so as it's in two nations. Thirdly so,
| because now international laws and regulations apply
| spoonjim wrote:
| In the US, "entrapment" is fairly narrow and covers only those
| situations where the police actually directly tell you to
| commit the crime.
| dkersten wrote:
| That's why they were approached to do sons things but not
| others, I guess. I assume that means there was some kind of
| oversight.
|
| Also it's not entrapment if the criminals are soliciting them.
| singlow wrote:
| Were the bank activities themselves illegal? It would only be
| entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity. It
| sounds like they were just soliciting banking services in a way
| that was attractive to illegal actors. Even if the banking
| services themselves were not legal, it would seem like
| entrapment if they used that to charge them with banking
| crimes.
|
| If NYPD operated a Limousine service in hopes that criminals
| would discuss their crimes while being overheard by an
| undercover officer, it would not be entrapment.
| 542458 wrote:
| " It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the
| illegal activity."
|
| I'd like to note that this isn't how entrapment works in the
| US (or many other places). If I'm an investigator, it is not
| entrapment for me to go to government employees and say "Hey,
| I'll give you $100 in exchange for state secrets. You in?".
| Covertly soliciting illegal activity to try to catch
| criminals is not entrapment. It only rises to the level of
| entrapment when it is something that would cause a "normally
| law-abiding person" to break the law, or that the defendant
| would otherwise have had no criminal intent - for example,
| "Give me state secrets or I'll kill your wife" would be
| entrapment.
| capitol_ wrote:
| This makes no sense to me, why is $100 different than a
| threat to the wife?
|
| Is it because the amount of money is too low?
| 10000truths wrote:
| Because one is presented as an option that you are free
| to turn down, and the other is a threat to your family
| that forces you to comply.
| vmception wrote:
| The bank activities were illegal and non compliant. The OCC
| was about to cut them out of the entire banking network for
| poor reporting, meaning no OCC-licensed banks could take or
| send wires to them or hold accounts in their name. It would
| have shut off all trade for this bank without knowing what
| they're doing or alleging any crime, yet.
|
| This is how the US enforces its will worldwide.
|
| The Treasury has a similar way to do that, without the OFAC
| list. They did it in 2018
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/francescop.
| ..
|
| Back to the OCC, the outcome of the audit would have
| solidified criminal charges against the bank directors, but
| then they backed off with the "this is a government
| operation" excuse. Other reasons they would back off being
| any other kind of leverage, which small banks do not have.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady stuff,
| but many of these operations are even acknowledged like Iran-
| Contra where the government sold arms to the embargoed Khomeini
| government to generate black money to fund the Contras.
|
| > Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale
| of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of
| Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[2] The
| administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund
| the Contras in Nicaragua.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
|
| It's also discussed that the CIA does similar things with poppies
| to generate black money to fund regime changey activities.
|
| Here's one such article which is a weird source, but points to
| more mainstream sources for evidence.
|
| https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/a-conspiracy-theory-that-be...
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady stuff
|
| I really don't understand how this is still possible with
| everyone having access to the Internet. They're pretty
| consistent [1]. It must be a bubble thing.
|
| 1.
| https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
| reedjosh wrote:
| Wow, thanks for that link.
| ljf wrote:
| Man that has taken my breath away. I'm pretty aware of how
| terrible the west can be (and how we can lie about it) but
| the sheer volume there is immense.
| hnbad wrote:
| Worth emphasizing, this isn't "the West", this is just the
| US. Not that other parts of "the West" don't warrant their
| own lists, but framing it this way unnecessarily cushions
| the blow.
| ljf wrote:
| True true, I'm from the UK and so I see us as complicit
| in some of this but yes the US seems to have a pretty
| good go at being awful to fellow humans.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| NPR is using a clickbait headline. I fell for it just like you
| did. This conveys the opposite of what it actually is - "Govt
| Agents setup a fake bank in a sting to attract drug traffickers
| to launder money netting $90mm in cash and over 100 arrests".
| reedjosh wrote:
| No, I'm of the same opinion of croes and saul_goodman.
|
| > they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So
| effectively they helped the biggest players by making it
| harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct
| business.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady
| stuff, but many of these operations are even acknowledged like
| Iran-Contra where the government sold arms to the embargoed
| Khomeini government to generate black money to fund the
| Contras.
|
| Another one, maybe the biggest known one, is when the US sent
| 12 bn to 14 bn in the form of 100 bills (yup, in bills) using a
| military plane to Iraq and these bills mostly all mysteriously
| vanished.
|
| 12 to 14... billions.
|
| At least 1.4 bn was found to have been stolen and stored in a
| bunker in... Lebanon (I don't remember if it was just located
| or seized). Overall an estimated 9 bn are unaccounted for I
| think.
|
| (trying to insert the wikipedia and NY Times link to the
| story/stories but I get a "we have trouble processing your
| request, sorry" from HN)
|
| There were wire transfer to the tune of billions too. But the
| 100 bills shrink-wrapped and flew in a military plane: you
| cannot make that up.
|
| Shady stuff if any...
|
| EDIT: like Iran-Contra, I'm pretty sure in the future movies
| are going to be made about these $100 bills.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > However, evidence before the committee suggests that senior
| American officials were unconcerned about the situation
| because the billions were not US taxpayers' money. Paul
| Bremer, the head of the CPA, reminded the committee that "the
| subject of today's hearing is the CPA's use and accounting
| for funds belonging to the Iraqi people held in the so-called
| Development Fund for Iraq. These are not appropriated
| American funds. They are Iraqi funds. I believe the CPA
| discharged its responsibilities to manage these Iraqi funds
| on behalf of the Iraqi people."
|
| You left out something pretty damn important, it was Iraqi
| money to begin with. Maybe they requested large pallets of
| cash, it shouldn't matter since it's their (Iraq's) money!
|
| I don't doubt the government has had a hand in shady stuff
| (US history from 1946-now in particular proves this), but
| this isn't what it seems. We didn't just break off $12B of US
| treasury money and send it off to Iraq with no oversight.
|
| > EDIT: like Iran-Contra, I'm pretty sure in the future
| movies are going to be made about these $100 bills.
|
| I highly doubt it, unless it is what Iraq did with _its own
| money_ after they received it from the Fed, what would the
| movie be about even? Iraq requests it's money and receives it
| is a pretty boring plot
| nisa wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_Fund_for_Iraq
| doesn't read like a boring plot at all.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| To think that this money didn't end up financing insurgency
| is to be naive.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| In fairness, it's likely that not much of that money went
| to financing insurgency. Some? Yes. Most? No way.
|
| Way too many piglets. Way too few tits.
| elefanten wrote:
| This comment begs for some sources and citations.
|
| Edit: I have a recollection of this incident but certainly
| not as mysteriously inexplicable and shady as you make it
| out. There was some context I've forgotten. Your story rings
| false.
| nsp wrote:
| googling "US plane 100 dollar bills iraq" returns a
| plethora of news sources that corroborate
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1
| [deleted]
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > (trying to insert the wikipedia and NY Times link to the
| story/stories but I get a "we have trouble processing your
| request, sorry" from HN)
|
| Try base64 encoding them and pasting the results?
| et2o wrote:
| This wasn't "shady," this was essentially a sting operation
| where they eventually seized 90 million dollars in cash and
| arrested over 100 people. Not bad. The bigger result was that
| it poisoned trust of banks by there kinds of criminals.
| croes wrote:
| Professionals already have banks for that. 90 million
| dollars? These are small fishes. They only helped the bigger
| ones go get rid of the competition and the effect on drug
| trafficking is near zero.
| Quenty wrote:
| From another perspective, consider it probably did not cost
| $90 million to execute this plan. So overall, this is a net
| profit, and most likely cost effective.
| croes wrote:
| Was the plan to make profit or to reduce drug
| trafficking? Maybe they should reevaluate their goals.
| rahilb wrote:
| It was a top secret plan spanning multiple countries
| likely run by corrupt officials, I think it probably cost
| more than 90 million!
| saul_goodman wrote:
| Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the
| operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by
| making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do
| conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels
| there...
|
| A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the
| US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after
| the dealers make money to catch them so they can seize the cash
| as part of the crime. This dis-incentivises the actual prevention
| of the spread of illegal drugs. The entire system is corrupt and
| there's little to no incentive for the authority to behave in the
| spirit of the laws they enforce - to raise public health by
| eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug
| addition creates.
| hpoe wrote:
| Well the reason for that is that the large cartels are already
| part of the game.
|
| SOCOM needs a place to get the money for their off the books
| operations, and if you start looking into special operations
| units it turns out there are a lot of those guys pretty heavily
| involved in drug trafficking.
| cronix wrote:
| Right, like in Oregon they recently decriminalized "personal
| amounts" of all drugs. Crack, heroin, meth, fentanyl, etc.
| Whatever you want...it's now just a misdemeanor offense like a
| parking ticket as long as you're under some limit. So personal
| amounts are "ok," but how does one obtain a "personal" amount
| from someone else unless they have more than a personal amount?
| In other words, on one hand it's illegal to deal the drugs, but
| after you've obtained them illegally it's ok. That logic
| doesn't square.
|
| > Just because small amounts are decriminalized, it doesn't
| apply when a person has more than is specified under the law.
|
| > "Possession of larger amounts of drugs, manufacturing and
| distribution are still crimes," Fox said.
|
| https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2021/01/31/what-...
| verall wrote:
| At the very least, it makes it hard to prosecute low level
| drug offenders, which is where the most abuse (originating
| from the government) is in the system.
| nicbou wrote:
| That makes sense to me. Chasing consumers is a waste of time
| and money. The arrest itself might cause more societal damage
| than the drugs if it ruins people's lives or is used to
| target minorities.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Some people argue that
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement is the
| main purpose of laws against drug consumers.
| jahmed wrote:
| Smell marijuana > Search vehicle
| nicbou wrote:
| I didn't know there was a term for that. It's exactly
| what I was thinking about.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The point of decriminalizing personal amounts of drugs is to
| change police behavior because they are doing more harm than
| good in this area.
|
| You want to arrest the people who are dealing drugs or
| causing other crimes, not permanently ruining the lives of
| people who are doing no harm to society.
| dantheman wrote:
| Why not just legalize them completely?
| elefanten wrote:
| It's not strictly true that they do no harm to society. A
| lot of deeply addicted people are still objectively a
| blight on their surroundings, _even if_ you view it as a
| health issue that calls for help rather than a moral issue
| that calls for punishment.
|
| Let's not underplay that damage drugs and addicts do.
| They're not the source of the problem, they shouldn't be
| the focus of the solution but let's be honest.
| reillyse wrote:
| If you are saying addicts commit crimes e.g. burglary
| well then prosecute them for those crimes, that's the
| only way I can take the "blight on their surroundings.
| Taken a different way, there are a lot of humans in the
| us who use other drugs, alcohol e.g. who are not
| considered a blight on their surroundings. Street drugs
| could be like those drug, and in fact during prohibition
| alcohol was an illegal "street" drug.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Prosecute the addicts for the crimes they commit instead
| of criminalizing addiction.
| SkittyDog wrote:
| Drugs aren't magical life-ruiners, that suddenly descend
| on unsuspecting healthy people and destroy them. The
| people you're describing are mostly already damaged by
| their own lives, hurting badly, and unable to emotionally
| function on their own. If you removed heroin or meth from
| the equation, they'd get drunk, instead... And they'd be
| roughly the same blight on their surroundings, regardless
| of their choice of substance.
|
| Our drug problems are, at root, a mental health issue.
| And neither will ever be resolved in a society that
| doesn't understand that both problems are one.
| mynewycombi wrote:
| Just to add - much of the damage of Heroin, and other
| drugs cut with fentanyl is precisely BECAUSE it is
| illegal.
|
| Heroin is smuggled in from Colombia in some mule's
| intestines and then injected DIRECTLY into the user's
| bloodstream. This causes many different kinds of fatal
| blood clots and bacterial infections.
|
| When Heroin was legal in this country (given as a cough
| medicine to young kids in the 1920s) it didn't lead to a
| reduction in the life expectancy of the users.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The enforcement objectives are like a horseshoe.
|
| The police have an incentive to get collars for petty
| possession, mostly to bank warrants for future trouble, and
| to go after big or brazen networks.
|
| The people in the middle are mostly free of interference. I
| used to work in a building that was about a block away from
| the county court, 4 blocks from a police precinct hq. Yet I
| watched three guys sell drugs across the street for the two
| years that I worked there.
|
| It has its ups and downs. In my state, with bail reform, woke
| stuff, and marijuana possession decriminalization, there has
| been a wave of shootings and murders as the gangs reorg and
| the cops are caught with their pants down.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| In a perfect world, I would like to see all drugs
| decriminalized. I would like to see drugs given to people by
| the government free of charge. Of course they would have to
| sit through a common sense education movies, titled "Ok you
| want to ruin your life with hard drugs--fine, but sit through
| this educational film."
|
| Until we get there; I am fine with small amounts of illegial
| drugs being an infraction.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I like decriminalization, but don't like government
| production.
|
| The film idea is funny, but I still disagree with that too.
| As anyone can tell from my commentary, I'm a crazy no
| government guy, so that's just my bias.
| lainga wrote:
| > So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it
| harder for the small to mid-tier [insert entity here] do
| conduct business
|
| Well, at least the government is consistent. When all you have
| is a hammer...
| suifbwish wrote:
| You nailed it. You have to let the fruit ripen before you pick
| it. Also if you don't go after the suppliers, you will have
| more distributors to harvest later. It's literally a cash crop
| for the DEA/police
| adolph wrote:
| Feature or bug? Cui bono?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and
| social problems that drug addition creates.
|
| If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs -
| including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed
| stores, mental health care and social services would be
| accessible for everyone, and _fact-based_ drug education in
| school be the norm, not the exception.
|
| The reality is that drug policy has direct roots in racism -
| marijuana and crack prosecution intended to specifically target
| hippies and people of color.
| briandear wrote:
| Racism? A bit of a stretch there. Hippies were mostly upper
| middle class white kids rebelling against their post-war
| indulgent upbringing. And alcohol prohibition before that was
| aimed at everyone.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| One of Nixon's top guys _explicitly admitted_ that the
| motivation was racism:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-
| ehrlichman-... "You understand what I'm
| saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either
| against the war or black, but by getting the public to
| associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with
| heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could
| disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could
| arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their
| meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening
| news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course
| we did."
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Per the grandparent, yes "marijuana and crack prosecution"
| have explicitly racist elements.
|
| Specifically, the 1930s anti-cannabis is specifically anti-
| Hispanic, and the question of why there are massively
| different sentencing laws around crack and powder cocaine
| seems to me and most of the people I know to have many
| obvious racial elements.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I love this comment. This is one area where I think
| crying racism is actually justified.
|
| Racism is thrown around as a justification for anything
| today, but _real_ racist policies like:
|
| > different sentencing laws around crack and powder
| cocaine
|
| That persist today are almost never mentioned.
|
| Another policy that disproportionally effects blacks:
|
| > A mother will receive far more from welfare if she is
| single than if she has an employed husband in the home.
|
| https://atlantablackstar.com/2014/12/24/ways-war-poverty-
| des...
|
| > But by the mid-1980s, black fatherlessness skyrocketed.
| Today, only 44% of black children have a father in the
| home. In unison, the rate of black out-of-wedlock births
| went from 24.5% in 1964 to 70.7% by 1994, roughly where
| it stands today.
|
| https://ifstudies.org/blog/family-breakdown-and-americas-
| wel...
|
| This in particular is discussed at length in Moe Factz
| https://podcast.app/moe-factz-with-adam-curry-p810825/
|
| An excellent podcast!
| apercu wrote:
| One of the US political parties has had their strategists
| admit that several of their policies are racist, and that
| their communication strategy foments and encourages
| racism. This is not news, it's been publicly out there
| for decades.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > > But by the mid-1980s, black fatherlessness
| skyrocketed. Today, only 44% of black children have a
| father in the home. In unison, the rate of black out-of-
| wedlock births went from 24.5% in 1964 to 70.7% by 1994,
| roughly where it stands today.
|
| Jesus Christ, that is an atrocity. Thank you for digging
| out that one.
|
| But what I wonder... is this a result of the welfare
| policy you mentioned, or rather a result of way too many
| Black fathers ending up in prison, gangs or dead as a
| result of "selective enforcement" and other abuses of
| police power?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think it's bold to assume the government even wants to nab
| the big guys.
|
| One example is fentanyl is killing us by the thousands every
| year. We know who the guy is who owns the factor that's
| providing most of the fentanyl and precursors to the cartels.
| He lives in China and runs an also legit chemical factory. He
| commits the crime right in the main factory in the open. We
| politely asked China to arrest him, but they said no. No real
| political pressure to do anything, no assassinations, nothing.
| Thousands dead every year.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > No real political pressure to do anything, no
| assassinations, nothing. Thousands dead every year.
|
| Assassinating a Chinese citizen in China would be a huge
| overreach and a major violation of sovereignty. Not to
| mention it wouldn't stop the drug trade.
|
| Instead of looking at the Liberal Hegemony playbook for a
| solution, they should de-criminalize and regulate. During
| prohibition many people were dying from additives/impurities
| in bootleg alcohol, now we don't have that problem.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think it's important to help people understand that the
| stated goals of the government are completely out of
| alignment with their behavior. The state pretends that it
| wants to stop the drug trade, but its behavior is the
| opposite. I have no reason to believe that the CIA and
| other three letter agencies care one iota about
| sovereignty.
|
| What the actual policy should be towards drugs is
| downstream of helping the public understand they are being
| misled systematically, and have been being misled since
| school.
| sneak wrote:
| On average, approximately 7x more people die in the US each
| day from use of tobacco use than do from use of opiates.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| In response to the Fentanyl/heroin issue, State govs clamp
| down on legit opioid Rx, leaving Dr's too wary to Rx any
| effective pain meds at all.
|
| People in chronic pain now get to live their lives without
| any relief at all. They get ignored my news orgs who are
| obsessed with amplifying an opioid hysteria narrative.
|
| Go Gov.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Agree. The opiod epidemic is just the latest moral panic
| used to justify limitng people's rights.if you want to
| o.d., that's your right and your fault. OTC pain medication
| useless for serious chronic pain and a bigger ripoff than
| prescription drug companies. Opiods are safe when taken
| under doc guidelines. This notion that otc drugs are safe
| is wrong too: Otc drugs are known to cause liver and kidney
| problems too.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/694548245
| stevespang wrote:
| Where is the text version ?
| williesleg wrote:
| NPR is a fraud
| strathmeyer wrote:
| Three short paragraphs? Do we have to install the app or
| something?
| mdeck_ wrote:
| There's a "listen" button at the top of the page. It may take a
| second for the Javascript that loads it to run after the rest
| of the page loads.
| fnord77 wrote:
| text version
|
| https://www.publicradioeast.org/post/episode-418-how-governm...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| You are the man.
| ttul wrote:
| Today's version would be a crypto exchange with its own USD
| stable coin.
| trhway wrote:
| Government provides an encrypted platform, a bank for money
| laundering, ... the supply chain has long been CIA side hustle.
| Basically private drug criminals are really federal contractors
| by now.
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