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Comment by ixacto | Hacker News Reader

The incredibly technical solutions suck if you live in the USA. If you have $10k and are stopped in a car, there is a high likelihood that the government thugs (police) will attempt to relieve you of the money, or you will have to prove where you earned it. Doubly so if you are a minority in the south.

Otherwise you might be able to get a Swiss bank acct, set up an offshore investment trust in some tax haven like the caymans (invest everything for awhile), transfer the money to a third country and then to a US bank. Another way would be to open up a quickie-mart/nail salon/hotdog stand and over-report income - this is what criminals do.

If you are an actual criminal with $billions then you could just talk to one of the big banks like Wells Fargo (which absorbed Wachovia) and ask them to launder it for you. So the government has already made criminals of anyone that decides to cash out large chunks of btc and bring the cash home.

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Doubly so if you are a minority in the south.

Yeah, because police targeting of minorities restricted purely to the south. 'Stop and Frisk' was all on the up-and-up, and I'm absolutely positive that the LAPD would never unfairly target minorities.

This stupid meme needs to die - this is a problem everywhere in this country, not just areas you don't live.

For one I don't think that's a meme, but I think he was more referencing specific instances that had been in the news somewhat recently of this happening in the south.

If you have $10k and are stopped in a car, there is a high likelihood that the government thugs (police) will attempt to relieve you of the money, or you will have to prove where you earned it. Doubly so if you are a minority in the south.

Just don't give them any probable cause (visible drugs/paraphernalia, alcohol, weapons) and don't consent to any searches. People who get bullied by the police are those who don't know their rights.

You're forgetting that a dog "alert" on a vehicle provides probable cause. If an officer suspects someone in a car has cash, here's the algorithm to get probable cause every time.

- Pull car over for x (x=illegal lane change, minor speeding, tinted windows) - "Smell" oder of marijuana and notice driver acting suspicious - Call for K9 unit - Coax the dog into "alerting" on some portion of the car, usually the front where the cameras don't see.

Once the K9 alerts, you have probable cause to search the vehicle even if the owner does not consent to the search. Cash you find, you can take, even if there are no drugs found. The owner of the cash must be able to legitimately explain why they have $10k in cash and burden is on the owner to prove that it is legit cash. That's very hard to do, even for a legitimate business or someone who deals in a lot of cash like a dancer. This is a civil, not a criminal matter and the burden of proof is actually on the defendant.

Even with the above algorithm, if a judge declares a stop to be illegal, the cash is still kept as it's not a criminal manner but a civil one.

|Edited to be less flippant

Oh, the odour of marijuana is another thing to avoid. That's borderline probable cause right there.

Really, if you're transporting thousands of dollars in cash you should adopt a security-oriented mindset. You need to be air-tight and leave nothing to chance.

Notice how "smell" was in quotes? You could apply this algorithm to my grandmother's car, because it's your word against the cop's. Being squeaky clean won't save you.

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