Is it possible for an individual to commit money laundering like a bank? In the classic example of money laundering, Charlie the Criminal would take his dirty money to Bob the Banker and get it in some form that is spendable and transferable. In this situation it would be expected that Charlie would know it is dirty money, but Bob the Banker does not need to be specifically aware the the money has criminal origin. Because of this he implements, if he is for example a cryptocurrency exchange, Know Your Customer (KYC) checks and refuses to deal in certain products, Monero in the UK for example. What if however Bob is not a financial institution but a member of the public (Bob the Builder perhaps)? If he uses a decentralized exchange such as bisq he would be performing much the same actions as Bob the Banker or Cryptocurrency exchange, including exchanging fiat currency for cryptocurrency and trading in Monero. The design of the market makes it impossible to perform any such KYC checks, and at least when exchanging fiat currency makes it clear that there is an covert element in the process (you are informed by the interface not to reference the transfer as &quot;bisq&quot; or &quot;cryptocurrency transaction&quot;). It is possible for an individual to commit the crime that a bank could be found guilty of by having insufficient money laundering prevention measures? As far as jurisdiction as one never really knows where the other party is located any jurisdiction where this is illegal probably makes it illegal anywhere so the most restrictive rules are probably the most relevant.
Because money laundering is a form of transnational crime there is an extensive system of treaties which harmonise, to some extent, the laws of most developed countries. Relevantly to your question, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime provides in article 7: Each State Party … Shall institute a comprehensive domestic regulatory and supervisory regime for banks and non-bank financial institutions and, where appropriate, other bodies particularly susceptible to money-laundering, within its competence, in order to deter and detect all forms of money-laundering, which regime shall emphasize requirements for customer identification, record-keeping and the reporting of suspicious transactions … Generally, local laws will define concepts like &quot;money transmitting business&quot; and require individuals engaged in these businesses to obtain a licence and comply with similar KYC and reporting obligations to a bank. For example, in the United States, 18 U.S.C § 1960 makes it illegal to run an unlicensed money transmitting business. In United States v. Rockcoons (3:17-cr-03690), the defendant committed this offence through peer-to-peer bitcoin trading: Rockcoons advertised his Bitcoin exchange services on the website LocalBitcoins.com. In 2015, HSI identified Rockcoons as the most prolific San Diego-based seller. In April 2016, the defendant’s LocalBitcoins.com profile showed that he continued to advertise as a trader and seller of Bitcoin in San Diego, with his profile reflecting that he had engaged in more than 500 transactions. As of October 2017, the defendant’s profile indicated that he conducted more than 1,000 bitcoin trades with more than 644 people. Rockcoons received a commission of as much as 36 percent per transaction. On the other side of the Atlantic, the law in the United Kingdom is explained in Vladimir Consulting Ltd v Financial Conduct Authority [2022] UKUT 168 (TCC). VCL had been trading on LocalBitcoins.com since 2017, but from 2020, was required to become licensed as a &quot;cryptoasset exchange provider&quot; under the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019. VCL was refused a licence because it had consistently failed to comply with requirements of the money laundering regulations. VCL challenged this decision in the Upper Tribunal, which analysed the applicable rules and confirmed the Financial Conduct Authority's decision.
Nope, the seller can't refuse &quot;to sell&quot;. They have sold it. They sold it right at the moment the contract was created (which, depending on where they were, would not necessarily even need to be in writing). The deposit is irrelevant. What is relevant is that now your friend must pay the full balance, and the seller must hand over the car. If the seller does not do that, that is a breach of contract which can be fixed by going to the court and obtaining an order to hand the car over.
The primary distinction between gambling and non-gambling is whether something is a game of chance, and usually, the statutes of a state prohibiting gambling will expressly define it in those terms. The mere fact that there is some element of chance or probability involved, however, is not sufficient to make something gambling, and the fact that there is some skill involved in a game does not automatically prevent it from being gambling. Generally speaking, if the activity serves some commercial or economically useful purpose, like an insurance contract entered into by someone with an insurable interest in the outcome, or a contract regarding a security or commodity price, it will not be treated as gambling under U.S. law (Britain and Ireland draw the line differently). The status of prediction markets is still unresolved, but since many of them call upon the application of skill and knowledge, rather than random chance, to make predictions, and since their use, for example, by the CIA, has given them an air of legitimacy, more often than not, they are not treated as gambling. Binary options are regulated in the United States by the CFTC and gambling is regulated by each U.S. state individually. This isn't entirely true. But it does appear that the CFTC asserted jurisdiction over this particular prediction market type activity, and did not consider it to be gambling subject to state law regulation. Also, there is some federal regulation of gambling even though it is primarily a matter of state law. Indeed, this ruling was quite helpful in the long run to the prediction market industry. The case held that Polygon.com was subject to CFTC jurisdiction, which would take it out of state law gambling jurisdiction and it provided a road map to come into regulatory compliance: The platform offered off-exchange event-based binary options contracts and failed to obtain designation as a designated contract market (DCM) or registration as a swap execution facility (SEF). All it has to do is register with the CFTC as a DCM or SEF and it is in regulatory compliance (these aren't trivial undertakings and could require months of interactions with the agency and $100,000+ of legal work to accomplish, but there is a clear path to doing so). does it mean that if a company creates a question (Yes/No) on financial assets (like an option traded on an exchange) will be considered as a binary option regulated by the CFTC while a non-related financial question is considered as gambling? No. The case held that the questions, for example, about who would win the next Presidential election, constituted a &quot;swap&quot; regulated by the CFTC and not gambling. It simply said that since the CFTC has jurisdiction and since Polygon.com had not complied with CFTC rules for conducting that activity, that it had violated the law.
Yes When you enter the jurisdiction of a country, you are subject to its laws. You are not, in general, subject to punishment for things you did before you entered its jurisdiction but if possession of bitcoin (or anything else) is illegal in that country, then possessing that thing makes you subject to prosecution.
According to Blackmail Overview :: Justia (emphasis mine): A blackmailer typically has information that is damaging to the victim, and uses threats to reveal that information in order to coerce the victim. Blackmail is considered a crime regardless of whether the information is true or false. The central element of the crime is the blackmailer’s intent to obtain money, property, or services from the victim with threats of revealing the information. So it's still a crime, at least in the US. But the enforcement problems are tracing the original emailer, which, due to (I assume) multiple email relay IPs, address spoofing, etc, and the big issue of identifying the actual individual who pressed the metaphorical "send" key on the bulk email script, the jurisdiction of that person, etc. As Ron pointed out, BitcoinWhosWho shows no one has fallen for it, even though millions of these emails get sent every day, gauging from the number that I get myself.
Your question has two distinct aspects which have to be considered separately: criminal law and civil law. I will give an opinion on both aspects, but first I have to give you a word of warning: This case is not clear in the sense that the law can be immediately apply. For a full answer you need the services of a practicing lawyer who does the necessary research. I have a degree in German Law and I have had some practice in IT law, so I know what I am talking about, but I am currently not practicing it and I have done no research for this case. So please, pretty please, don't base any important decision on my opinion. It is a mere guidance, not more. Criminal Law The German Criminal Code (StGB) specifies two cyber crimes explicitly: Computer Fraud (Computerbetrug, § 263a StGB), which you violate when you gain some illegal monetary advantage using a computer, for example a hacker using your stolen credit card data to transfer funds to his account. Computer Sabotage (Computersabotage, § 303b StGB), which applies when you cause damage with a computer, for example a hacker attacking the power grid. The second option clearly does not apply here, but the first one could. That would depend on the answer to a couple of questions, most importantly if a user would gain some monetary advantage at your expense and if that advantage would be illegal. The first of these questions (advantage at your expense) already does not have a clear and universal answer. As it is quite common with fraud, this criminal law question has a civil law aspect (more on that on part two of the answer). The two ways how this could create an advantage to an attacker world be... A contract would not be enacted between you and the attacker, but he would take advantage of you believing in the contract's validity. This option would though probably not apply here, judging from the (spoiler alert) civil law part of the question. A valid contract would be created, but the terms and conditions would not apply and that would cause an illegal financial advantage for the attacker at your cost. Since the base contract would still be in effect and that comes with the obligation to pay, that advantage would have to be in the terms and conditions not applying. You can construct such a case, but that would depend on the terms in question, so there can not be an answer here. There is though a good chance that the terms would still apply (see below), so there will probably be no damage. The other aspect is if this advantage would be through illegal use of the system, which is an interesting question in your case, since the link is publicly accessible. But, then again you can also fake a POST, so you can argue that it is always possible to make the terms not appear. An aspect to be considered though, is that merely attempting computer fraud is already an offense. An attacker who thinks he can gain a monetary advantage from such an attack could be still punished, even if it is not even possible to commit the crime due to the circumstances (this by itself is an interesting question in criminal law). The bigger danger that I see is that your solution makes it easy for an attacker to make their own site and then use your public link to book on your site (in a man in the middle attack). That would clearly be an offense, but it would be the attacker's not your client's. But since your success depends on the trustworthiness of your site, I would recommend to look for a safer solution (such as POST with https). To summarize that part: There is a possibility that accessing the site in the described way is a crime, but I would say it is rather not due to the lack of damage. It is though possible that an attacker still commits a crime by attempting such an attack. You should in any case make your site safer to make it harder to commit MITM attacks. Civil Law The civil law side is whether the terms can be accepted in the described way. This is a case for the law of general terms and conditions (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen or AGB). In a few words, for AGB to apply, the have to be notified to the client and he has to accept them. If your site is used how it is supposed to be, both conditions are met. In the (invalid) way you have described, the first condition is in question. Since the user knows that using the described URL means accepting the terms, I would consider the second condition to be satisfied. So how can the terms apply if the user has not seen them? In case you provide no shortcut to the accepted link and you also prevent that it can be found in another way (e.g. through a search engine), the direct link would be equivalent to someone signing terms and conditions without reading them, although he has had a chance to do so. That would still make the terms apply, because the client would have been given the chance to read them, which is the only thing the seller needs to do. So chances are that your terms would still apply (thus negating the financial advantage necessary for a crime). However, AGB law is a complex subject that is generally handled by specialists. Any opinion of someone who is not such a specialist has to be handled with care. That includes my opinion.
Is it legal to sell currency at a price lower than face value? Yes. In fact, to donate is the act of transferring for free the ownership of something. Outlawing a transaction that is less extreme than a donation would be inconsistent with the lawfulness of donations. A significant departure from the market exchange rate does not affect the validity of currency exchange. A &quot;sale&quot; of currency in terms of itself is not illegal, since the transaction can be viewed as a combination of two transactions performed instantaneously and involving the fiction of an intermediary currency. Offers of currency for less than face value also happen very often when transacting the bonds issued by a country's central bank. Any two parties can transact those bonds in secondary markets. The scenario you describe obviates redemption periods, fluctuation risks, and various formalities, but those differences are inconsequential from a legal standpoint.
Yes If it is illegal to transfer money between the jurisdictions then any contract that requires that to happen is unenforceable. This is a subset of "sovereign risk" in a trans-national deal.