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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> they need to prosecute all the road crews and gas stations

If you don't see the difference between knowingly helping a designated terrorist organization launder money (specific and known criminal and crime) and operating an honest business in a high-crime neighborhood (statistical likelihood of aiding a criminal), you shouldn't be making business decisions or running a financial services firm. It's an obvious distinction, one that a roomful of people with basic legal instruction will agree on 99% of the time, except for the one with a profit incentive to argue the opposite.

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The road crew knowingly helps DTOs launder money by building the interstate system known to assist with exactly that.

The line gets really blurry when you see someone buying large quantities of legal products that can be compounded into other products like meth. At what point are you aiding by selling lye. That's the case here.

> line gets really blurry when you see someone buying large quantities of legal products that can be compounded into other products like meth. At what point are you aiding by selling lye. That's the case here.

I fully agree on the line, in general, being fuzzy. It's not here.

Multiple texts describe Binance helping Hamas circumvent money-laundering flags by moving small amounts, helping a Chicago-based trader hide his U.S. origin, et cetera.

If someone buys a bunch of lye, the line is blurry. If they walk in hitting a meth pipe, ask you in which aisle are the meth supplies, and when they hand you their credit card, you advise them to pay in cash so you don't have to draw up a receipt, the line isn't blurry so much as very far away.

>Multiple texts describe Binance helping Hamas circumvent money-laundering flags by moving small amounts

I was unable to find these. The only hamas bit I found in the indictment was Binance describing generally how Hamas launder in low value quantas like $600. Not texts showing they identified specific hamas accounts and developed individualized plans to assist them.

Yes, the line about "after receiving information about 'HAMAS' transactions" seems deliberately intended to withhold the actual content of the conversation about Hamas.

There is no doubt that the line is indeed pretty blurry in many cases. But if the regulators have evidence that you are taking actions specifically to evade the applicable laws, you are firmly on the wrong side of that line.

That is an example where it could be blurry, I agree. But if you are suspicious enough to have internal communications about said suspicions and don't make any effort to communicate the same to law enforcement, then the line becomes less blurry.

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