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Of course! I’m not suggesting it would be impossible for serving senior intelligence personnel to receive crypto as payment when selling secrets, either via a physical wallet or digitally.
But the way that modern KYC / transaction analysis tools have advanced makes it much more difficult to hide the spending of this money than ever before.
If you make $120,000 a year at the NSA, you can’t buy a $4m vacation house in Palm Beach without your bosses knowing; you probably can’t go on a $100k summer vacation to Europe without your bosses knowing; you can’t suddenly become a major shareholder in a highly profitable small business without your bosses knowing. Right now, almost every use case for spending crypto still involves a conversion to dollars and thus some involvement with the regular, heavily surveilled financial system. You can try to transact as much as possible in crypto, but there will pretty much always be signs (especially if you intend to share any wealth with friends and family). Neighbors gossip, people overhear things, notice sudden changes in spending. And if you’re intelligence, you’re on everyone’s list of sensitive accounts.
So sure, you could conceivably receive $5m in crypto and do nothing with it, no differently to how Russia could just give you $5m in a suitcase that you keep under the bed for the rest of your life. But that tends not to satisfy those who sell secrets.
Sure, but we're not talking about millions here. Many people get caught selling secrets for paltry amounts - a few thousand, even. You could make that much money in a week selling commissions to suspiciously wealthy furries and nobody is going to look too hard at it.
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exactly. gold arguably would be better
I think if you’re extremely patient your grandchildren in 80 years might get away with selling a diamond pendant or something whose provenance can’t be fully proven. But if you want to enjoy the money yourself (which most financially-motivated double agents presumably do) then it’s much tougher.
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With all the shitcoin pump schemes it really wouldn't be difficult to have some coin, dogeMoonDiamondCoinbirdDog2Coin or something created by the paying party. the recipient buys it on a decentralized exchange, the paying party fakes a bunch of trades back and forth at a higher price point, then the recipient sells their shares. Is it a little suspicious that you got lucky and picked the right moonshot coin? Sure. But people get lucky. Especially if you are smart enough to also have picked a bunch of duds as well.
this is what an NFT accomplishes . it is why it has been accused of being used for money laundering.
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This isn't a court of law. Doing sus shit when you're privy to the good stuff is going to get you shitcanned even if you have a "clever" story about why it's actually not sus.
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Right but I mean you can just "find" some on an old hard drive. I mean shoot I scrapped a computer with a wallet on it a decade ago. Who can say boo to that? As long as you are paying someone or depositing with a wallet that has been inactive for a while, just in case anyone looks into it while you buy you 4 million dollar home. You're correct in that it would be suspicious if you work in intelligence, better be paid up on your red flag insurance! I suppose I was gaming it out more for the average person.
It can be traced. the only fresh bitcoin is coins direct from miner or major exchange.
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Agreed that paying a bribe or two to someone with a security clearance and having everyone get away with it is probably doable to someone with the resources of the FSB, or all of China. But this isn’t a bribe or two; lottery-style cash infusions are probably not enough, the CCP or FSB need to continually send more money to their spies, which you can’t get away with.
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Because if you’re CIA and you file your taxes one year and your bank and the IRS flag you as having sold $4m in crypto that you ‘found on a thumb drive I lost in 2011’ you’re going to be under extreme scrutiny. Every alarm is going to ring, there is going to be a big internal investigation, all of your communications are going to be reviewed, your movements are going to be reviewed, what you had access to is going to be reviewed. They’re going to ask to see the thumb drive, to see the wallet, to see when and from whom the coins were purchased etc. Better have those old Mt Gox emails ready.
Could you still get away with it? Possibly, if you covered your tracks during the initial selling of secrets perfectly. People get away with espionage all the time, obviously. But it is going to flag, and for the rest of your time in intelligence (and beyond if you retire) you’re going to be on a list somewhere of people who mysteriously came into great wealth while working with state secrets.
I'm worried about making a fortune off crypto and other investments without any funny business, and being thrown in a rape cage by a DC judge because fuck you that's why. They'd probably dig up my conservative leaning post here as further evidence about how much I "hate America" to supply the motive. Might even explicitly not allow me to present evidence that all the transactions are legitimate some fucking how.
After what I've seen done to Jan 6'ers, I have no expectation of justice if the DOJ notices me.
These posts are starting to remind me of the handmaid's tale meme. There's no reason to think that the DoJ gives a shit about Internet poasters.
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If you don’t have a clearance the scenarios previously discussed wouldn’t apply to you.
Worrying about a progressive surveillance state unbanking and imprisoning you is worrisome if present trends continue (and Europe already does this at times for speech), but the Jan 6 mostly peaceful insurrectionists did about the dumbest thing possible in putting a giant red target on their backs for the feds to go after.
Yes
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You're totally right, but didn't you just describe 50% of congress? I think we may be overestimating the security apparatus here. Shoot you can buy off a supreme court judge with a winnebago and a few vacations these days.
It might just be, "Hey Tom found his old computer in the basement and now he's rich"! It might not be incompetence, it might be that no one really cares as long as you keep your head down and your boss happy.
Menendez was previously investigated for taking bribes from a drug cartel to put diplomatic pressure on Columbia to drop cases. The CIA- and everyone else for that matter- knew he was corrupt. But it’s not actually the CIA’s job to bust serving congressmen for taking bribes.
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I think intelligence knows who’s corrupt in congress and with who, and prefers to approach congressmen quietly to remind them of what they know and what the consequences are. The Menendez thing where he’s finally been arrested is because they told him again and again and he didn’t stop.
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