| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Hundreds Charged Worldwide in the Takedown of the Largest Darknet Child Pornography Website, Which was Funded by Bitcoin |
| 2019-10-18 |
| [Department of Justice] Jong Woo Son, 23, a South Korean national, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia for his operation of Welcome To Video, the largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content. The nine-count indictment was unsealed today along with a parallel civil forfeiture action. Son has also been charged and convicted in South Korea and is currently in custody serving his sentence in South Korea. An additional 337 site users residing in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington State and Washington, D.C. as well as the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Australia have been arrested and charged. Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu for the District of Columbia, Chief Don Fort of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and Acting Executive Associate Director Alysa Erichs of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), made the announcement. "Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behavior," said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. "This Administration will not allow child predators to use lawless online spaces as a shield. Today’s announcement demonstrates that the Department of Justice remains firmly committed to working closely with our partners in South Korea and around the world to rescue child victims and bring to justice the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes." "Children around the world are safer because of the actions taken by U.S. and foreign law enforcement to prosecute this case and recover funds for victims," said U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu. "We will continue to pursue such criminals on and off the darknet in the United States and abroad, to ensure they receive the punishment their terrible crimes deserve." "Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server’s physical location in South Korea," said IRS-CI Chief Don Fort. "This largescale criminal enterprise that endangered the safety of children around the world is no more. Regardless of the illicit scheme, and whether the proceeds are virtual or tangible, we will continue to work with our federal and international partners to track down these disgusting organizations and bring them to justice." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #13 Frankly, I find it impossible to trust a cryptocurrency. It is just another scheme and its proponents are just another shady tech company/organization to me. And making and propping up the money should be and is the province of government, one of the few (in my opinion) places where government is infinitely better than any alternatives and where its dominance should be respected. |
| Posted by: Vernal Hatrick 2019-10-18 20:27 |
| #12 Thank You, Lex. That was an education. Eep ! Gotta restructure the Go-Bag ! |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-10-18 11:38 |
| #11 Bitcoin exists for similar reasons Americans own guns, you can't totally trust the goods the state provides . |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2019-10-18 10:44 |
| #10 OK gents, I'll cede the floor to one who knows a hell of a lot more than any of us, Nouriel Roubini, who has a demonstrated gift for spotting investment bubbles. Roubini cuts through the bitcoin bullshit with his usual flair here - sorry for the long re-post but it's buried within a series of articles at Project Syndicate, the website where many of the world's best and smartest economists publish, and it's not easy to find. So here goes - I'm done here. Take it away, Roubini: Blockchain’s Broken Promises Jan 26, 2018 NOURIEL ROUBINI Boosters of blockchain technology compare its early days to the early days of the Internet. But whereas the Internet quickly gave rise to email, the World Wide Web, and millions of commercial ventures, blockchain's only application – cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin – does not even fulfill its stated purpose. NEW YORK – The financial-services industry has been undergoing a revolution. But the driving force is not overhyped blockchain applications such as Bitcoin. It is a revolution built on artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things. Already, thousands of real businesses are using these technologies to disrupt every aspect of financial intermediation. Dozens of online-payment services – PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, Venmo, and so forth – have hundreds of millions of daily users. And financial institutions are making precise lending decisions in seconds rather than weeks, thanks to a wealth of online data on individuals and firms. With time, such data-driven improvements in credit allocation could even eliminate cyclical credit-driven booms and busts. Similarly, insurance underwriting, claims assessment and management, and fraud monitoring have all become faster and more precise. And actively managed portfolios are increasingly being replaced by passive robo-advisers, which can perform just as well or better than conflicted, high-fee financial advisers. Now, compare this real and ongoing fintech revolution with the record of blockchain, which has existed for almost a decade, and still has only one application: cryptocurrencies. Blockchain’s boosters would argue that its early days resemble the early days of the Internet, before it had commercial applications. But that comparison is simply false. Whereas the Internet quickly gave rise to email, the World Wide Web, and millions of viable commercial ventures used by billions of people, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin do not even fulfill their own stated purpose. As a currency, Bitcoin should be a serviceable unit of account, means of payments, and a stable store of value. It is none of those things. No one prices anything in Bitcoin. Few retailers accept it. And it is a poor store of value, because its price can fluctuate by 20-30% in a single day. Worse, cryptocurrencies in general are based on a false premise. According to its promoters, Bitcoin has a steady-state supply of 21 million units, so it cannot be debased like fiat currencies. But that claim is clearly fraudulent, considering that it has already forked off into three branches: Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Gold. Besides, hundreds of other cryptocurrencies are invented every day, alongside scams known as “initial coin offerings,” which are mostly designed to skirt securities laws. So “stable” cryptos are creating money supply and debasing it at a much faster pace than any major central bank ever has. As is typical of a financial bubble, investors are buying cryptocurrencies not to use in transactions, but because they expect them to increase in value. Indeed, if someone actually wanted to use Bitcoin, they would have a hard time doing so. It is so energy-intensive (and thus environmentally toxic) to produce, and carries such high transaction costs, that even Bitcoin conferences do not accept it as a valid form of payment. Until now, Bitcoin’s only real use has been to facilitate illegal activities such as drug transactions, tax evasion, avoidance of capital controls, or money laundering. Not surprisingly, G20 member states are now working together to regulate cryptocurrencies and eliminate the anonymity they supposedly afford, by requiring that all income- or capital-gains-generating transactions be reported. After a crackdown by Asian regulators this month, cryptocurrency values fell by 50% from their December peak. They would have collapsed much more had a vast scheme to prop up their price via outright manipulation not been rapidly implemented. But, as in the case of the sub-prime bubble, most US regulators are still asleep at the wheel. Since the invention of money thousands of years ago, there has never been a monetary system with hundreds of different currencies operating alongside one another. The entire point of money is that it allows parties to transact without having to barter. But for money to have value, and to generate economies of scale, only so many currencies can operate at the same time. In the US, the reason we do not use euros or yen in addition to dollars is obvious: doing so would be pointless, and it would make the economy far less efficient. The idea that hundreds of cryptocurrencies could viably operate together not only contradicts the very concept of money; it is utterly idiotic. But so, too, is the idea that even a single cryptocurrency could substitute for fiat money. Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, whereas fiat currencies certainly do, because they can be used to pay taxes. Fiat currencies are also protected from value debasement by central banks committed to price stability; and if a fiat currency loses credibility, as in some weak monetary systems with high inflation, it will be swapped out for more stable foreign fiat currencies or real assets. As it happens, Bitcoin’s supposed advantage is also its Achilles’s heel, because even if it actually did have a steady-state supply of 21 million units, that would disqualify it as a viable currency. Unless the supply of a currency tracks potential nominal GDP, prices will undergo deflation. That means if a steady-state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would continuously fall. By extension, any nominal debt contract denominated in Bitcoin would rise in real value over time, leading to the kind of debt deflation that economist Irving Fisher believed precipitated the Great Depression. At the same time, nominal wages in Bitcoin would increase forever in real terms, regardless of productivity growth, adding further to the likelihood of an economic disaster. Clearly, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies represent the mother of all bubbles, which explains why every human being I met between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2017 asked me if they should buy them. Scammers, swindlers, charlatans, and carnival barkers (all conflicted insiders) have tapped into clueless retail investors’ FOMO (“fear of missing out”), and taken them for a ride. As for the underlying blockchain technology, there are still massive obstacles standing in its way, even if it has more potential than cryptocurrencies. Chief among them is that it lacks the kind of basic common and universal protocols that made the Internet universally accessible (TCP-IP, HTML, and so forth). More fundamentally, its promise of decentralized transactions with no intermediary authority amounts to an untested, Utopian pipedream. No wonder blockchain is ranked close to the peak of the hype cycle of technologies with inflated expectations. So, forget about blockchain, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, and start investing in fintech firms with actual business models, which are slogging away to revolutionize the financial-services industry. You won’t get rich overnight; but you’ll have made the smarter investment. |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-10-18 10:22 |
| #9 #3 Another. The Federal Reserve, the banker's bank wants to be the one's who control fiat money or money that is intrinsically worthless and based on debt. The system results in ever-increasing debt. Money is printed to satisfy the debts and interest. The system tends to result in inflation. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2019-10-18 09:57 |
| #8 look up debasement of the currency, history thereof There's a good reason, learned over about 10,000 years of civilization' experience with mediums of exchange, why we want centralized control of the money supply Bitcoin institutionalizes currency debasement. Bizarre that people who decry this when perpetrated by bad governments want to do it tenfold through scam currencies ... |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-10-18 09:17 |
| #7 I'm all for innovation in commerce that reduces the power of the State to regulate and dis-empower the individual. Like all tech, it is empowering for both law-abiding and law-breakers. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-10-18 09:12 |
| #6 No, Lex, reason for bitcoin, not those using it. Get a grip. However, to play your rhetorical game, you seem to be happy to have those in power track every transaction you make and watch over your shoulder on how you spend it. You got an alternative beyond direct bartering? /rhet question |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-10-18 09:00 |
| #5 True. Change must come from within society. Not by an interminable succession of redundant legislations and righteous judicial rants preceding minimal reformatory sentences. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-10-18 08:47 |
| #4 ... practicing upon innocent children? With pedoph1les? ... practicing with Kim Jong Il and Iran and Maduro and jihadist money laundering? ... practicing with drug cartels? No thanks. We - not The Man, but We as in civilized society - need to shut this down before more damage is done. |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-10-18 08:40 |
| #3 ...for practice. When pols clamor for doing away with currency and sticking the population with their digital money only so they can track every transaction for taxation and political correctness, you'll need to look into alternatives. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-10-18 08:02 |
| #2 Why (other than facilitating international crime and helping rogue regimes) does bitcoin exist, again? What legitimate business problem does it solve which is not solved by the existing international financial system? |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-10-18 07:42 |
| #1 Jong Woo Son, 23 An enterprising young man. Must've started in high school. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2019-10-18 07:37 |