This headline just now appearing
Arrests made in $6 billion cyber money-laundering case
They are calling it a case involving "criminal activity including credit
card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child
pornography and narcotics trafficking".
However, it really does not involve those things at all. What is really
involves is that the US Government has been extending its reach world wide
so that it has become impossible for many people to get credit or debit
cards or to engage in legitimate businesses, so they have been going
offshore to do their business.
For example, My Friend Bobby Fischer played a chess match in Yugoslavia in
1992 where he won $3.5 million. However, the US Government had imposed
sanctions on Yugoslavia and therefore indicted Bobby Fischer for playing
the chess match.
Thus Bobby Fischer was facing the prospect of spending ten years in prison
just for playing a game of chess. The result was Bobby Fischer was arrested
in Japan on an extradition warrant from the USA. He finally got out of jail
and was granted asylum in Iceland where he died there.
Multiply this one incident by thousands of other people who have been
caught in the same sort of trap and you will see the reason why they have
gone offshore. Even people who are not US Citizens and have never visited
the USA are being caught in these traps.
Again, Bobby Fischer did nothing illegal. It was not illegal for him to
play a chess game in Yugoslavia. Nothing he did had anything to do with the
crimes mentioned on the list above. Yet, he was indicted and criminally
charged and was never able to return to the USA.
The owners of the group above were arrested in Spain. They were operating a
money transfer business in Costa Rica. They are not US Citizens because
they gave up their US citizenship years ago. Yet they are facing
extradition to the USA and long prison services merely for providing
financial services to people who could not get them anywhere else.
Sam Sloan