Item — HN Reader

"And on June 17, Lacey is scheduled to be sentenced on the one count—international concealment of money laundering—on which the jury found him guilty. It comes with a possible sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison. Lacey plans to appeal his conviction on this count, and there seems like a good chance it will be successful, since the money he allegedly "concealed" was reported to the federal government with all the proper paperwork. But he could still face prison time as that appeals process plays out."

How was he found guilty of concealed money when he reported it to begin with? Then could still serve prison time for it.

4 comments

And how is it money laundering if it turned out the money wasn't proceeds of crime.

I spent a few minutes trying to figure that out, but Reason is incredibly slanted, they just link to some even nuttier site, and even starting with news I couldn't find specifics of the one count he was convicted on.

But I'd be a little skeptical of Reason's handwave "properly reported to the government". Reported on taxes? To SEC? As part of disclosure for this trial?

One way it could be money laundering without being proceeds of a crime is if he took $1M from Pablo Escobar for a huge advertising commit and then refunded $900k to Able Paleo Bars, LLC for unused ad spend.

Media Bias Fact Check ranks Reason as a "Right-Center" biased website with a "High" rating for factual reporting: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/reason/

They certainly approach stories with an editorial perspective, but they're generally factually reliable and hardly "incredibly slanted".

Reason’s libertarian bias sits outside the mainstream Left-Right axis of US political discourse.

So what looks centrist or right leaning on a 2D scale is actually heavily biased in a different political direction.

Yes, thank you for pointing this out – but they do tend to report the facts correctly.

I don't think there's much Left in US politics, unless you mean in the language of US politics, where somehow Democrats are considered "Left".

That website calling CNN moderately left instantly destroys its credibility

“They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes“

So, when they present facts, they surround them with emotional words to try to sway opinion.

What is this "nuttier" site you're talking about? Do you mean https://frontpageconfidential.com/aboutfpc/ , the site run by Lacey and Larkin and their fellow journalists, in order to defend themselves?

Reason would indeed seem slanted compared to traditional liberal media, specifically as it relates to not regurgitating the DOJ’s narrative.

Happy Reason subscriber here.

Fellow Reason subscriber here. They're more balanced than most.

Reason may be "slanted", but you can follow their logic in their articles, regardless of your stance.

Reason is not slanted. It's a very libertarian site and a lot of people come from the left.

>X is not slanted. It's a <specific slant being described>.

I meant like say brieghbart is, it's a conservative source. I've never known of reason to be such thing though.

“libertarian” is as much of a slant as left or right is; that its largely orthogonal to the left/right axis, and lots of people think only in terms of that axis (on which Reason is clearly on the right, but not as far from center on that axis as it is on the libertarian one) doesn't change that.

There's about a 50/50 split in the libertarian party so it really isn't. Actually, I would say most of the people there lean left, or center.

All news media has a bias, it's literally impossible to serve a finite news set and not exert some editorial control. However, if you describe a news site as (very political ideology) I think it's fair to consider it slanted.

While that is philosophically true, but this thread is illustrating why that isn't a helpful perspective . Consider a media organisation has a bias towards accurate reporting with a view to helping readers achieve the best outcome for themselves and good outcomes for society. We could correctly call such an organisation "slanted", but it is missing the point that there some slants are privileged by virtue of leading the reader to act in a reasonable and rational manner while others don't.

I'm not sure if the US - or the world - has any of those. But the generic "there is a slant" point is useless. What matters is what the slant leads people to do, what information the slant is omitting and whether said slant is a good one on balance. If calling a media organisations "slanted" doesn't imply "slanted [in a way I think is potentially bad and relevant]" then the word is useless and shouldn't be used.

Money laundering laws doesn't require that the money be proceeds of crime. It only requires that you do things in an attempt to obscure the source of the money.

For example structuring cash deposits. If you have a pile of legitimate cash, say through a cash business (you pay all taxes), but you intentionally make multiple $9,000 deposits to avoid generating a CTR (currency transaction report for cash deposits over $10,000), congrats, you violated money laundering laws.

So out of curiosity, what if you run a business that just happens to generate $9K of cash regularly, for any reason?

Are you supposed to risk keeping it on premises until enough adds up, or you should tell the bank to file a CTR, or something else?

You’re at risk of some over zealous prosecutor accusing you of structuring.

It’s not the $9k deposit that’s illegal, it’s structuring your deposits to avoid the $10k limit. The same actions can be legal or illegal depending on your in intent.

In your example, the $9k deposits are perfectly fine. Although if you really always deposit $9k you’ll probably get some questions.

like tax evasion laws -- they're like a joker card/ wildcard -- to law enforcement. to be played when they wanna arrest you.

that's what mobsters get nabbed on, corrupt gvt officials etc. it's not difficult to prove anyone has tax evaded.

You could receive money legitimately (let's say, donations to your synagogue) and funnel it to politically disfavoured causes (for example, anti-war protesters in the Middle East).

It doesn't fit the metaphor of money laundering, of turning dirty money into clean, but it's usually prosecuted under the same statutes.

That isn't what money laundering is. Money laundering is taking illegally gotten funds and turning it into apparently legal funds. What you're describing is fraud: you took money for one purpose, and used it for something the donators didn't want it used for.

Notably, it is not money laundering to obscure the source of funds when they didn't come from an illicit source. Nor is it money laundering to simply obscure the source of funds, so they don't come from any apparent source. If that were money laundering, it would be illegal to withdraw cash from an ATM, which is obviously absurd.

No, the donators gave you the money to use as you see fit. You're not betraying their trust: you're betraying your government, by funding a movement with aims inimical to them.

A relevant statute in the US is the USA PATRIOT Act [0], specifically Title III, which deals with "International money laundering abatement and terrorist financing". It absolutely does restrict transmission of clean money to non-favoured political entities, often in the same breath as it forbids actual money laundering. It does not forbid withdrawing cash from an ATM, but it does forbid a bank from issuing you an ATM card if they should have guessed you would use the money for the wrong purposes.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ56/PLAW-107publ56.htm

What statute? I don't know either way what the actual definition is.

Money laundering can be defined as concealing either or both the source and destination of the funds.

Channeling legal money into illegal activities qualifies as well. Not clear either is applicable to this case however.

mmm actually no.

money laundering - the federal crime - relies, absolutely relies on their being an illicit origin. it cannot be charged independently and relies on discovering there was an illicit origin and moving to prosecute that.

think harder about it and successful money laundering is impossible to be convicted of as an illicit origin is never discovered and probable cause is never established to get the subpoenas.

seems that nobody ever imagined that the jury convicts someone on the money laundering charge and the judge acquits on the illicit origin charge amongst others. this does seem to require an appeal to rectify and everyone agrees he has a big chance of this getting dropped on appeal too, since its just dangling disconnected from its requirements.

the other things you’re talking about would be prosecuted under different laws.

> money laundering - the federal crime - relies, absolutely relies on their being an illicit origin. it cannot be charged independently and relies on discovering there was an illicit origin and moving to prosecute that.

There are money laundering laws that require it be illicit funds.

But there are also transaction reporting requirements - like generating a currency transaction report (CTR) - that don't require the funds to be illicit. It just requires that you attempt to circumvent them.

"The transaction is designed to evade any regulations promulgated under the Bank Secrecy Act"

This guy got into a pissing contest with the Arizona AG, which led to FOSTA/SESTA over the casual encounters page.

This has years of history. I worked in a similar industry to backpage for 11 years.

arguably, it is also helped get Kamala Harris into the White House. [https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-kama...]

That's a question and a half. Since he reported it, it isn't hidden.

Overzealous prosecution.

How do you know that?

Among other reasons, because the DOJ accidentally leaked their internal communication about the case to the defense which turned out to be fairly exculpatory: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6345276-Backpage-DOJ... https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6345275-Backpage-DOJ...

The defendants are precluded from using or mentioning any of this information even though it shows that the case is being wrongfully prosecuted because it is the state's attorney client privileged material which was released by mistake.

It's crazy to me that our judicial system would be happy to knowingly find innocent people guilty, just because they feel like it's more important to pretend that exculpatory evidence simply doesn't exist.

If you want a silver lining then consider that, unlike most trials, you know with much more certainty which is the just result. When that is not reached, or reached in a roundabout uncertain way (like the ongoing money laundering conviction) then you learn about the ways in which the legal system fails to be a justice system. Arguably we learn about things we should fix.

I think its the lesser of two evils.

The greater evil being what?

Because we know that trying to destroy Backpage was the personal crusade of Cindy McCain and it became very personal.

This has long been written about.

> She is the widow of U.S. Senator John McCain from Arizona, who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

Nepo-wife. And they were saying the Soviets were a decrepit society at the top, the US from today is not much better.

It's worse than that. She was a rich heiress that he left his first wife for because Cindy had the bankroll to fund his political aspirations. He was as much of a leech as she is.

Any links? John bang a Backpage ho, or why the hate?

there's tons in Arizona media.

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/michael-lacey-jim-larki...