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Comment by quantumBerry | Hacker News Reader

The idea that something is a crime if it is "accessible from the US" is truly a contortion of justice. If you take $5, walk across the mexican border, and then buy an antibiotic labeled for use in humnans -- is that a violation of US law because the Mexican pharmacy sold something that a US person could possibly access? What if that person used their Panamanian passport and not their US passport (VPN) to buy the antibiotics and the vendor could have never known they were a US national?

Once currency leaves the US it is absurd to claim anything that happens with it is US jurisdiction. If that is the case all Americans who paid taxes should be put on war trials for money sent as foreign aid to despotic regimes.

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> If you take $5, walk across the mexican border, and then buy an antibiotic labeled for use in humnans -- is that a violation of US law because the Mexican pharmacy sold something that a US person could possibly access?

That's not how the law actually works though. The store in Mexico can't be accessed by someone in the jurisdiction of the US at the time of the transaction. There's no legal avenue for the US to pursue the Mexican store except negotiate with the Mexican government to extradite them.

Additionally most US laws have "knowingly" clauses. While you can be charged for committing a crime it's up to the state your actions met every clause of the laws. So even if on the off chance the US was able to extradite your Mexican shop owner they would need to prove the shop owner knowingly committed the act.

And the mixer can't be accessed by dollars currently in the US, only by crypto that has been transmitted overseas via propagation of the blockchain. The mixer isn't sending dollars across the border to the US, and for blockchain based crypto that requires the blockchain to be propagated across the border, likely by a completely unknowing 3rd party even if the mixer operator doesn't wish for persons on US soil to have access to the blockchain.

Furthermore Tornado never responded to the e-mail so it's not clear they were aware the undercover claimed they had criminal intent. It's quite possible the e-mail was never read. Desiring privacy isn't a crime, and that's a very legitimate use of mixers. Not to mention if you have cash in your wallet you're mixing and trading them all of the time, and most certainly you are at some time unwittingly laundering formerly dirty cash.

So your statement really just emboldens the insanity of the claims of the DOJ.

If value from an illicit transaction is ever diverted back into dollars, then it becomes the purview of US officials. I'm assuming that loop had been closed more than once with this mixer.

Considering the the transactions happened overseas and we have no evidence they were prosecuted by overseas authorities, there's quite a bit of doubt whether the transaction were illicit in anything except the imaginary scenario that these transacions happened in the US (they did not). There doesn't appear to be prosecution in this case of exchanging for fiat back in the US so there's no prosecution for the on-soil "closing of the loop" you so mention. We all know many foreigners are buying real estate here in the US with dollars to evade capital controls in places like China, and this is actually happening on US soil, why isn't the DOJ focused on this?

That's also quite the assertion that anything that happens with dollars is in the "purview of US officials." from a practical perspective you are correct but its conclusion is rather odious. If this were actually true and US dollars are the reason for jurisdiction then we both know launderers would all just use Euro or something else instead 100% of the time. Yet they don't, because pragmatically it makes little differenc as US would pursue their enemies all the same whether they transact in Euro or Dollar -- the dollar in this case is simply an excuse.

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