OMFG
The legendary wire fraud charge actually being used for its original purpose?
Hundreds of suspects for non-wire fraud (but charged with it anyway) will be shocked and stunned.
Two Canadian lovers and their housemate have been charged with fraud after allegedly netting $8m by selling a made-up cryptocurrency called PlexCoin to victims. Dominic Lacroix, 38, and Sabrina Paradis-Royer, 26, are already on the hook for $7m following an investigation by America's financial watchdog, the SEC, into PlexCoin …
that bits and bytes are real money if stored in the right server. Enough people and other servers believe the bits in my credit union are good enough to cancel out my debts from time to time.
You need more believers for faith to work its magic and a priest with at least some knowledge of arcane arts to generate "real" money of the likes of Bitcoin.
Reginald Onway,
Are you saying that the phone systems in almost every country were only designed as a backdoor - so governments could wiretap criminals?
I mean, most were owned by governments, so there was definitely wire-tapping going on. But it still goes on, now that many are private companies too. That's not the reason the phone systems exist, nor is it the reason that people use them.
This is explained in the complaint to which the article linked.
The federal courts in Ohio have jurisdiction because they promoted their dodgy bitcoin to residents of Ohio, used the wires and mails of Ohio, and fleeced an Ohio resident. The Canadian courts would also have jurisdiction to prosecute those and other offences.
That's a slippery slope.
Under that logic, the courts in Islamabad would be able to prosecute Americans living in America who post videos on TikTok which are deemed offensive and illegal under Pakistani law. (As recently discussed).
You would end up the unworkable situation where everybody on the internet is governed by the superset of every country's laws. Nobody would be able to do anything on the internet, just in case it was illegal in some other country they've never been to.
Under that logic, the courts in Islamabad would be able to prosecute Americans living in America who post videos on TikTok which are deemed offensive and illegal under Pakistani law.
They can try. Won't get them very far in trying to get an extradition warrant though.
But also, you don't understand extradition law. Extradition is an agreement between governments. So it only applies to those offenses that that the two governments agree on. This normally means that an extradittion treaty only applies to those laws that are on the statute books of both countries.
That was the get-out that Julian Assange tried. He tried to say that the Swedish legal system calls things rape that others don't - and therefore the charges against him didn't fall within the extradition agreement. But lost, because the UK High Court ruled that the charges would also have been rape in the UK.
There's a further standard get-out, which is that some countries will not extradite for "political crimes". Things like treason, espionage and the like. And therefore that will be written into their extradition treaties.
So as what they are alleged to have done is illegal under Canadia law - extradition should be no problem, unless the Canadians want to try them first.
"Under that logic, the courts in Islamabad would be able to prosecute Americans living in America who post videos on TikTok which are deemed offensive and illegal under Pakistani law"
Not quite. If Pakistan law were the same as American here, Pakistani courts could prosecute American residents who sent copies of those naughty videos to people in Pakistan, used servers in Pakistan to distribute those videos, or sold copies of those videos to Pakistan residents.
Having said that, you've identified a big problem with English libel laws where if a Pakistani website calls a Pakistani politician a crook, the website can be sued in England if even just a single English resident read the defamatory article and in reality it has sod all to do with England.
"Having said that, you've identified a big problem with English libel laws where if a Pakistani website calls a Pakistani politician a crook, the website can be sued in England if even just a single English resident read the defamatory article and in reality it has sod all to do with England."
On the other hand, it needs to be brought as a private prosecution and so brings income into the UK. The UK has a lot of highly specialised courts and legal expertise and many cases end up being tried here even if neither of the sides nor the dispute have more than a tenuous link to the UK. And, whatever your personal opinion of the UK legal system, it's still held in high regard for fairness and equality in other places around the world.
I don't understand why they didn't just make a cryptocurrency. I'm sure there are even tutorials about forking Etherium or something.
It sounds like they're great at sales. Why not do it legitimately if it's not that much harder than doing it illigitimately?
Oh they're the sort of people who talk about their crimes over Skype text chat. Nevermind.