The founder of Liberty Reserve, a digital currency that has evolved as perhaps the most popular form of payment in the cybercrime underground, was reportedly arrested in Spain this week on suspicion of money laundering. News of the law enforcement action may help explain an ongoing three-day outage at libertyreserve.com: On Friday, the domain registration records for that site and for several other digital currency exchanges began pointing to Shadowserver.org, a volunteer organization dedicated to combating global computer crime.
According to separate reports in The Tico Times and La Nacion, two Costa Rican daily newspapers, police in Spain arrested Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 39, as part of a money laundering investigation jointly run by authorities in New York and Costa Rica.
Update, May 28, 9:11 a.m. ET: Libertyreserve.com is now resolving again, but its homepage has been replaced by a notice saying “THIS DOMAIN NAME HAS BEEN SEIZED,” and features badges from the U.S. Treasury Dept., U.S. Secret Service, and the DHS.
Original story:
The papers cited Costa Rican prosecutor José Pablo González saying that Budovsky, a Costa Rican citizen of Ukrainian origin, has been under investigation since 2011 for money laundering using Liberty Reserve, a company he created in Costa Rica. “Local investigations began after a request from a prosecutor’s office in New York,” Tico Times reporter L. Arias wrote. “On Friday, San José prosecutors conducted raids in Budovsky’s house and offices in Escazá, Santa Ana, southwest of San José, and in the province of Heredia, north of the capital. Budovsky’s businesses in Costa Rica apparently were financed by using money from child pornography websites and drug trafficking.”
For those Spanish-speaking readers out there, Gonzalez can be seen announcing the raids in a news conference documented in this youtube.com video (the subtitles option for English do a decent job of translation as well).
Liberty Reserve is a largely unregulated money transfer business that allows customers to open accounts using little more than a valid email address, and this relative anonymity has attracted a huge number of customers from underground economies, particularly cybercrime.
In a now 10-page thread on this crime forum, many members are facing steep losses.
The trouble started on Thursday, when libertyreserve.com inexplicably went offline. The outage set off increasingly anxious discussions on several major cybercrime forums online, as many that work and ply their trade in malicious software and banking fraud found themselves unable to access their funds. For example, a bulletproof hosting provider on Darkode.com known as “off-sho.re” (a hacker profiled in this blog last week) said he stood to lose $25,000, and that the Liberty Reserve shutdown “could be the most massive ownage in the history of e-currency.”
That concern turned to dread for some after it became apparent that this was no ordinary outage. On Friday, the domain name servers for Libertyreserve.com were changed and pointed to ns1.sinkhole.shadowserver.org and ns2.sinkhole.shadowserver.org. Shadowserver is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that works to help Internet service providers and hosting firms eradicate malware infections and botnets located on their servers.
In computer security lexicon, a sinkhole is basically a way of redirecting malicious Internet traffic so that it can be captured and analyzed by experts and/or law enforcement officials. In its 2011 takedown of the Coreflood botnet, for example, the U.S. Justice Department relied on sinkholes maintained by the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). Sinkholes are most often used to seize control of botnets, by interrupting the DNS names the botnet is programmed to use. Ironically, as of this writing Shadowserver.org is not resolving, possibly because the Web site is under a botnet attack (hackers from at least one forum threatened to attack Shadowserver.org in retaliation for losing access to their funds).
Reached via Twitter, a representative from Shadowserver declined to comment on the outage or about Liberty Reserve, saying “We are not able to provide public comment at this time.” I could find no official statement from the U.S. Justice Department on this matter either.
Libertyreserve.com is not the only virtual currency exchange that has been redirected to Shadowserver’s DNS servers. According to passive DNS data collected by the ISC, at least five digital currency exchanges —milenia-finance
Assuming the reports at The Tico Times and El Nacion are accurate, this would not be the first time Mr. Budovsky has attracted attention from authorities for money laundering. According to the Justice Department, on July 27, 2006, Arthur Budovsky and a man named Vladimir Kats were indicted by the state of New York on charges of operating an illegal money transmittal business, GoldAge Inc., from their Brooklyn apartments. From a Justice Department account of that case:
“The defendants had transmitted at least $30 million to digital currency accounts worldwide since beginning operations in 2002. The digital currency exchanger, GoldAge, received and transmitted $4 million between January 1, 2006, and June 30, 2006, as part of the money laundering scheme. Customers opened online GoldAge accounts with limited documentation of identity, then GoldAge purchased digital gold currency through those accounts; the defendants’ fees sometimes exceeded $100,000. Customers could choose their method of payment to GoldAge: wire remittances, cash deposits, postal money orders, or checks. Finally, the customers could withdraw the money by requesting wire transfers to accounts anywhere in the world or by having checks sent to any identified individual.”
From the U.S. government’s description, Liberty Reserve sounds virtually indistinguishable from GoldAge, except for having been based in Costa Rica. If Liberty Reseve stays offline, this could cause a major upheaval in the cybercrime economy. I will be following this case closely, and would expect to hear more about this apparently coordinated takedown following the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. on Monday.
For now, however, many in the underground would rather believe almost any other explanation than a law enforcement takedown. The administrator of cybercrime forum Carder.pro, for example, has been telling forum members that the entire incident is the work of professional hackers working for Liberty Reserve’s competitors.
Carder.pro administrator “Ninja” isn’t buying the news being reported by Costa Rican media.
Update, May 26, 10:45 p.m. ET: A competitor to Liberty Reserve, a virtual currency called Perfect Money, on Saturday posted a note to its site saying it would no longer accept new registrations from individuals or companies based in the United States. “We bring to your attention that due to changes in our policy we forbid new registrations from individuals or companies based in the United States of America. This includes US citizens residing overseas,” the company wrote. “If you fall under the above mentioned category or a US resident, please do not register an account with us. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
Update, May 28, 1:26 p.m., ET: I just filed a follow-up story which confirms that libertyreseve.com and other exchangers were seized by the U.S. government. The story also examines the impact of this law enforcement action on other digital currencies, including Bitcoin.
This is pretty crazy. Here is another more HQ source: http://www.teletica.com/Noticias/11646-Detienen-a-tico-en-Espana-vinculado-con-millonario-fraude-electronico.note.aspx
People in HF are getting confused, but some are starting to think that LR is gone for good.
Once again it’s proven that if you operate “out in the open” like many, perhaps most, cybercriminals do, and use services that are quasi-legal and “above ground”, sooner or later you will do jail time – or at least be massively inconvenienced and lose money.
Didn’t the entire drug dealing industry prove this over and over? Standing on street corners with drugs in your pockets is profitable – until you are inevitably arrested and do jail time, at which point your “profits” reduce to minimum wage or worse.
This is not to say “crime doesn’t pay” – it does, if you do it right. Usually that means entering politics or the banking industry. 🙂
Brian why do you always snoop in the underground site? Who pay you for this? Do you think this will stop us eh?
“Brian why do you always snoop in the underground site?”
Because you’re so friggin’ entertaining when you scurry around for cover when the lights are turned on?
“scurry around for cover when the lights are turned on”
Cockroaches are known for that behavior.
Well I’m glad to be a cockroach. Cockroaches were around before imbecile humans like you, and we will be around after. Have a bad day, thank you. \\
Long live Liberty Reserve!
Long live Carders!
Because it’s so darn interesting and entertaining! 🙂
btw, maybe you can tell us why verified.ms has been down so long as well?
“Because it’s so darn interesting and entertaining! ”
agrees) It’s realy interesting)
About LR – why so serios? Hack – it’s art, and some money for life;) Turn on your brains, where are over 9999 ways to get money from card or get payment from your customer…
I’m not a carder, but know that system well… for Carding you can use any payment system… Any!
Because – It’s simply to get some passports, just hack corporate wi-fi… Register accaunts in payment system on your “new passports” and be John Smith or someone else)
P.S. Sorry for my poor English, it’s not my native language.
“Shadowserver.org is not resolving, possibly because the Web site is under a botnet attack”
Still happening. Cyber-children are throwing a DDoS tantrum.
Great article and one which points the way towards drastically reducing Internet fraud. Each time one of these online money-launderers is created, allow it to run for a little while, perhaps six months, to attract fraudsters like bed bugs to carbon dioxide. Then raid it, shut it down, and use forensics to identify more criminals. If the country in which the servers are operating refuses to cooperate, disconnect its Internet connection from the world until it does (yes, I know that the world does not quite work that way, but one can dream).
Brian, maybe you can call your FBI pal, Agent Lies, and suggest this to him.
You need to be ddos on you brain.
You must be the scurrying target of Brian’s next excellent adventure. I look forward to it.
This would be a lovely sentiment if it only affected ‘criminals’ but you do realise not everybody lives in your country, right? Some places, currency exchanges are the only easy way to get money FROM your country — LEGAL money — and so not only criminals will be affected by this.
But why would you care about upstanding, law abiding citizens of other countries? As usual, the United States considers itself the lawmakers for the entire world.
Newsbreak: It is not, and it should not be.
I realize that in Russia, China, and a few other places, ‘capitalism’ is defined as “anything you can get away with doing,” but I suggest you reread Brian’s first sentence, especially the part about Liberty Reserve being the “most popular form of payment in the cybercrime underground.” I am not proposing that PayPal be shuttered.
And your comment is most disingenuous, given that much of Brian’s reporting involves people stealing from mainly companies in the USA and transferring the loot to Russia.
The proof of the criminality is what, statements from government officials who have a vested interest in shuttering LR, even if NO crimes were associated with it? The vast majority of crimes are funded by money from offline regular banks, not thru online processors.
And what gives with claiming to have the right to close entire institutions over disparate acts commited by a few people—if somebody commits a crime using money withdrawn from an ATM, do we shut down the whole bank?
This. Thanks.
Civilized countries usually arrest fences, i.e. people who buy stolen goods from thieves at a substantially reduced price and sell those goods to unsuspecting buyers, even if some of the fence’s transactions are lawful.
By your logic a ‘fence’ would be an exchanger who does not follow KYC/Know Your Customer standards. Some do. It’s not equivalent to fencing. FWIW.
It is not MY logic, Mr. Station. It is the logic of the legal system in many countries around the world. Look-up the word in a legal reference.
I’m not arguing what a fence is in general. I’m saying that your analogy is incorrect. In this case a fence is a ‘bad exchanger’ not the ‘bank’ (putting aside that LR isn’t a bank for a minute — you cannot technically use LR for anything but exchanging a piece of digital nothingness until you use an exchanger to remove the money).
While I find your imperialist attitude somewhat adorable, I am not Russian or Chinese, and I would say I have a fairly decent set of morals. As usual the carders will come out and make everyone else look stupid, but as it so happens I live in a country that makes wire transfers a headache (and where paypal is not permitted). I work for an outsourced industry. Places like LR basically enable me to pay my rent with funds legitimately worked for at a fairly low (for Americans) hourly rate, for services you no doubt take for granted. Ironically it is shit like this that DRIVES a lot of people TO cybercrime. Or do you not understand simple economics?
I suspect you do not.
Thanks, play again.
I have a difficult time believing that someone with a handle of “voksalna” is not Russian, especially given some of the answers you have given in the past. Vokzal is the Russian word for station, train or boat. Maybe Bulgarian or Serbian?
“most of that money is sent via Western Union and Moneygram”
I think they should be heavily scrutinized as well. I think the top 20 (aka Too Big To Fail) US banks should be broken-up. I think Wall Street should be regulated within an inch of its life. I am not a fan of outsourcing for the reasons you mentioned and more.
As for your crack about economics, you can think whatever you like.
Don’t they have banks in your country?
The very fact that you think Russia is the only country that, in fact, speaks Russian (and touche for your use of Google Translate — few would go this far ;)), in itself bespeaks of some degree of geographic and linguistic ignorance.
Here, I mean ignorance in the dictionary sense; you clearly do not know that Russian is a major language in other countries. Perhaps I am Latvian. Perhaps I am Georgian. Perhaps I am Kyrgyz (by American standards a dangerous thing to be since people seem to associate a small sampling with a larger whole). Perhaps I am Chechen (uh oh). Perhaps I am Transnistrian. Perhaps I am from Belarus. Or Moldova. Or perhaps I am Ukrainian. Perhaps I am diaspora from NONE of these places and just grew up knowing Russian from my family. Or perhaps I am from any other country where Russian is spoken by a small minority. Maybe I am not even in a country where ANYBODY speaks Russian but me. My point is your logic is erroneous, whether or not I *am* in Russia.
It serves you no good to disrespect or discredit Russia as a whole anyway. Russia has its faults as well. You won’t claim me to say that it is not draconian at times, overreaching, or willing to use its own surveillance powers — so do MOST countries that can *afford* this level of control over their citizenry (and many that cannot, thanks to “generous aid” from other countries; “one hand washes the other”, as the saying goes, correct?).
Just like I’d never say that every single American supports the travesty of invading foreign countries or serving death sentences upon foreigners (and its own citizens but never mind that) (with or without judge or jury, but likely without much say by anyone but the ‘highest powers’) I would expect you not to ASSUME that xenophobia is appropriate when it comes to my own populace — wherever that may be.
The fact that you live in a country where you believe your banks can be trusted, again, does not mean that everybody does, nor does it mean that it is easy to receive money, electronically or not, regardless of where you live. Maybe a better analogue here is something like your country and poor people before so many ‘prepaid debit cards’ became available. Clearly not all ‘check cashing places’ in the US were major law breakers, and clearly not everybody that used them were criminals. In fact probably before your country willingly embraced prepaid reloadable debit cards criminals themselves were largely prevented from legitimately conducting transactions or paying large large fees to access money they earned legally — far more difficult than it would be for them to, as urban parlance might go (because, yes, I read urbandictionary) ‘sling crack’).
BTW re banks, I suppose I need to remind you, who probably was not affected by Cyprus or Greece, etc, how many banks (thus personal bank accounts) that are NOT in your lovely country have been gutted and frozen lately? Yes, non-criminals. ESPECIALLY non-criminals.
So … because your political and/or banking systems are dysfunctional, the rest of the world should just ignore criminal activity?
You do realise by the way, that most of that money is sent via Western Union and Moneygram, don’t you?
Guess how much illegal money passes through your hands (and your banks) every day. Care to venture?
cyberwar money by Nothing&Nobody with $ / lulz for krebs
fun game now but will back soon in week
cyberwar money week
Money for nothing and get your laundering for free
How to recovery your Liberty Resever???
join here in our group get more information about update of LR
http://www.facebook.com/groups/478704328866538/
OMG THIS REAL?
say need grow botnet 100k or 10000k ?
you joke…
some like guys need oil/food/car/apartment my city
HOW INHUMAN….
make deflamtory remark try kill lr more and say blah you russian do robbery
i am russian and not do this
make botnets double my scene news ICQ & JABBER liberty reserve dollaz convert to ruble easy to me
GOLD, OIL, MONEY, GOD
This all the masons / illumnati / usa gov
try control the world not do this not do that
well i am russian make botnet anyway inject grab boa.com
this not scary me
animals
…what in the…nevermind.
Conspiracy theories and Google Translate?
I actually understood him. Should I translate? 🙂
If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I’d appreciate it; just out of curiosity, you understand. 🙂
omg look its magicz, on krebs
Small type in article:” a major upheaval in the cybercrine economy”, should be cybercrime.
@BrianKrebs
You want more DDOS? 😉 If you want more, you’ll receive more?!! huh?….. You Fool!! =)))
what is it with the USSA thinking it can define how other countries work?
Stay classy, dude!
USA gov do the best in the name of god and just to help everyone.
USA never do anything bad…
You know, it’s pretty normal that people who seem to dislike USA eventually end up with unexplained cancer, slip-and-fall-die, pass due to a terrible accident…
It really surprise me that the level of IQ in this world is so low that almost any politician or media today can make anyone fall for anything…
Heard latest news? Milk is actually black!
A study from a super secret science facility in China just revealed that!
Nah, in my opinion, if LR isn’t back within a few days, then let’s just forget about it and accept it, just like the past american history through the times, it was all planned…
It’s generally stated in media that LR has been used by criminals as a financial system, but can’t refer to a single source. I believe LR has been also been widely used for good purpose. There are many web-hosting companies for example accepting LR as payment method.
LR, just like any other e-currency platforms, can’t control its users. I’m sure drug-dealers, terrorists and much more use PayPal also for example.
Let’s just hope LR will soon be back.
“Heard latest news? Milk is actually black!
A study from a super secret science facility in China just revealed that!”
Actually, given how often Chinese businessmen use melamine — an industrial plastic — to increase the indicated level of protein in milk intended for children, the above just might be true, but only in China. It is not super secret, however; just search for “melamine china”.
fking usa they cant control any things just fking ban our sites long live liberty reserve we love lr and it will be back soon
PayPal and Banks Credit card are more worst way of doing money Laundering. Liberty Reserve is 100times better than all other payment processor.
If they don’t want LR because some may be using it for criminal purposes then they should wipe off PayPal and other processor or better still close internet and let every country stay on their own.
If Liberty reserve does not work in the next few days, Forex market will close down and the entire word economy will be shaken to the foundation. People will loose trust in internet business because what happens to LR can happen to others in a shortest possible time.
I think the U.S. government has always looked sideways at any money transfer business that does not implement any kind of anti-money laundering capabilities.
Anyone who doubts that Liberty Reserve is the currency of choice by denizens of the underground hasn’t spent enough time there. Does that mean all of the commerce conducted through LR is fraudulent? Certainly not.
What a lot of internet users don’t know is that Liberty Reserve is a huge target for phishing
Brian, what I don’t understand here is, if the US doesn’t like something it has every right and ability to prevent American citizens from using it (never mind your Constitution, which seems to be worth less and less, which is a pity because it is a beautiful document).
But they did not choose this route. Why not?
They mostly went this route with online gambling and casinos unless there were US bank accounts involved (like the Sun Trust stuff from a couple of years ago). I would tend to doubt a Ukrainian would be storing LR earnings in a US account unless he were an idiot, so I do not think this is that. I have often wondered if them shutting down online gambling for US citizens was a way for them to reintroduce it as they are doing now in order to tax.
The biggest question I have here, Brian, is why they specifically chose now to do this? Any idea?
I have noticed an awful lot of Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans getting arrested in Spain in the past couple of years by the way. Was it just that they arrested him because this was the first time he went into a place where the US had easy access to arrest him? Or was this connected to other cases? Etc.
What happens to all the money LR holds for its clients does costa rica become owner of the funds or the US
My suspicion is the US will seize it and then Costa Rica will get some of it. It’ll probably work a lot like the gambling shutdowns of a couple of years ago.
whosoever that started this saga will die in 7 days
Many peoples talking about it, and some one says that LR website under DDoS, but maybe it’s just last hope?)
exchanger does not remain money in their account.
only those that have money in their LR account will loose it.
Anyone who doubts that Liberty Reserve is the currency of choice by denizens of the underground hasn’t spent enough time there. Does that mean all of the commerce conducted through LR is fraudulent? Certainly not.
I agree brian reasson being some users use LR to stop other users charging back even after the services are provided unlike paypal even after services delivered webdesign coding scripts etc in paypal always reversed
Any growing business that does not originate from US will eventually be affected by US politics why. This bad and wicked.
If the founder of a business is fraudulent he or she should be arrested not his or her business.
There is no way that something like a skiing company would use LR over PP. LR was primarily used for BH activity. There’s just no way around it.
There’s no way people would use Bitcoin to buy cupcakes or sushi.
Oh wait. THERE IS.
LR works via exchanges. It’s much easier to wire a vacation payment via a LR exchanger that I fully filed my ID with via LR than from my bank, for example.
There are a lot of places that take LR. One thing LR is/was great for is ‘non-repudiation’ which is to say, people can reverse charges on a credit card. They cannot on LR, which means someone cannot purchase a good or service from you and then later say ‘oops’ and hit you with big fees. Again this is up to the buyer and seller, and I’m not sure what business the government (especially foreign government) has in saying who can and cannot do business with whom.
I do wonder if the fact that LR permitted funding in USD and EUR and GOLD etc opened it up more to the US stuff. Then again if LR were based in Panama they’d be using the USD so it’s not so clear that using, say, the Colon would have significantly mattered (it’s more or less fixed based on the USD exchange rate anyway).
Brian, has any legal documentation/charges been filed yet? Technically he is a Costa Rican citizen, and I’m curious about the dual criminality issues in this case.
“It’s much easier to wire a vacation payment via a LR exchanger that I fully filed my ID with via LR than from my bank, for example.”
English mangling, sorry. It’s much easier to send a bank wire for a vacation payment via a LR exchanger that I fully filed my ID with, than it is to send money via my bank, for example.
America can fool some people sometimes but they can,t fool all the people all the time.
PayPal has done so much worse than LR and i do not see anything special in 2% of LR users involved in cyber crime compared to 7% of PayPal users who are primarily based in the US and have done so much fraudulent transfer.
The difference being the US can easily subpoena everyone that uses Paypal and/or monitor the traffic to/from Paypal at any endpoint or vendor. But then we get into selective prosecution which, like world policing, is something the US is very fond of (how could it not be, given the great number of laws and punishments there, now?).
As soon as I read about this on Daily Hacking news , I came here and sure enough “Crebs” was on top of it yet again :–)
Good Lr sucks!!! Lol and I hope all of those HYIP sites go out of business! LR made it really easy for them…
Is it only LR that those hyip use?
they use paypal and other processors too remember
They do seem to prefer LR. Paypal is tricky for HYIPs because it steps into money exchanging and maybe even gambling areas in US law, and Paypal is a US company, though I do see it used sometimes. (Note to saucymugwump: I do not make my living doing HYIP either).
And while I cannot believe this needs to be mentioned, because I am trying to remain somewhat neutral here, you people who are gleefully going crazy about how you can’t access your carding money or botnet money etc are only making shit worse for everybody by basically saying what they did (ie shutting things down) was the ‘right move’ and letting them justify what they did to everybody.
I think paypal should no longer accept the country of Russia! hahaha.
Yandex Wallets and WMZ/WME are way more useful than Paypal in land of Russia anyway. 😛
For instance one can walk to a small electronic kiosk, put in cash, and get out credit to an electronic currency. Yes, anonymously.
so then what are you guys upset about? just do that then .
I’m not sure how that’d work to get paid by a non-Russian/Ukrainian company, and deposit methods would be very different between companies anyway (unless you are suggesting people go around doing hundreds of hundred-dollar transactions with cash in random locations in little machines that could not handle such volume anyway (this is actually a very funny image :)).
Also you seem to think that everyone is willing to do business with Russia (and indeed Eastern Europe) which in itself would be ludicrous except you’re one of the people who basically say nobody should do business with Russia or Eastern Europe. Your xenophobia is showing, and you’re proud of it. I guess you didn’t read the rest of the comments by myself or anyone else, or just don’t care since they do not “jibe” with your world view.
So you win in that I wasted my time.
US freakonomics system is fraudlent in its core !
Who have the bigger guns makes the rules !
e-gold,Liberty Reserve … whos next ? Bitcoin ?
And who is benefiting from this total worldwide monetary control ?
So i guess you think money laundering for criminals is ok? Do you really believe only the US would be upset at this? Is this all a conspiracy by America because LR got too popular?
Maybe thats half right….Maybe LR got too popular….but for the wrong reasons….
Why not use one of the many other payment options? Whats wrong with paypal? Did they freeze your account? Did they not approve your money exchange? Is your country not accepted? If its Russia…I approve!
If I get paid by Payoneer I have to pay them more than 2x as much to simply *get paid* than if I got paid by LR in fees to be able to withdraw the money. That’s not including the exchange rates and the fees to actually withdraw the money. They simply skim xx% off the top of my earnings.
And I still get to pay taxes.
(Note I did not mention name of “Payoneer Partner” I’d get paid with for anonymity reasons, but there are not that many, and I’m sure other people here have worked online).
I just heard WMZ/WME is more useful to you ….lol
My friend, why you do not like bears and vodka?)
I think he is Canadian. Is, how to say, ‘being friendly’ with the US way of life.
Brain did you have any amount in LR account ?
Yes, I did, actually. But it was less than $50 I think.
Do you plan on asking for it back?
Did you forget WebMoney?
How is not WebMoney 100 times more worse than Liberty Reserve? Interesting that US hasn’t managed to shut it down…
This one was stupid… To shut down a WebMoney, USA should fight Russia 😉 Since webmoney is located at russia.
I don’t think I’m the only one amused by the threats, tantrums, wailing, and crying from those inconvenienced by LR’s passing. However what I find MOST amusing is that people who make money hacking are pissed when they get hacked!
Do you REALLY think that a DDos attack is going to make people give up hacking you? You steal for a living and think that a DDos attack is going to make us say it’s OK for you to continue to steal?
Idiots, YOU are the ones who tell us that if you can get away with it, it’s OK. Well someone hacked YOU! Doesn’t matter who gets the money or whether Costa Rico gets a cut. Your money was stolen, just like you have done to others. Deal with it, or get a real job instead of being a parasite.
Can you prove all money circulating within LR is “stolen”?
Where do you get this from?
There is of course illegal and legal money within LR!
Is it right to confiscate all money then???
I don’t see a big difference between LR and a bank.
What if one of your banks customers made a huge deposit, which later on turned out to be “stolen” money?
Would you like the US to arrest the owner of your bank and confiscate all money there?
Shouldn’t father US arrest PayPal owner soon too?
There’s currently lots of heat going on with PayPal accepting “booter” payments. Source: http://www.itworld.com/it-management/357306/legitimate-online-services-enabling-ddos-attacks-hire-sites
Shouldn’t US shut it down too soon, and confiscate all money?
In thinking about this I am thinking about parallels here between the Mega case and the YouTube cases as far as IP.
I like your bank analogy. If you don’t mind, I might take it a step further and say it’s like you having your money deposited in a nice, “normal” bank and someone else having an account at that bank. The bank, as all banks do, invest to pay interest (through loans, etc). One of the mortgages they give out is to someone who uses a house to make meth. This mortgage gets fully paid off in the allotted period of time. Later, the meth house gets seized by the DEA. The bank made money (like interest) off of the loan, plus they invested it to pay you your interest on your savings account. Thus you are in possessing of money that was involved in criminal activities.
Do I have this right?
(PS I have tried to make this analogy American-friendly (like ‘DEA’) to appease the average reader. ;)).
Anders, your complaint would mean a LOT more if thieves stealing money asked who they stole it from. Not everyone on the losing end of computer theft is a corporate mogul or politician. In fact, very few are. So pardon me if I continue to laugh about thieves getting PWNED and whining about it.
For those who did lose earned money to LR, I am personally sorry about it. But if you are honest, you probably need to find an honest bank to work with (or at least more honest.) Banking at the bank that a thief uses is stupid enough, that I can’t muster up much sympathy for you. It’s like those idiots in Waziristan who host the Taliban in their house. No room for complaining when a smart bomb lands in your living room. If you are that stupid, then gene pool is better off without you.
I expect computer thieves will get smarter and start spreading out their money. But when Al Capone was finally convicted, it wasn’t for murder or prostitution or gun running or illegal liquor … it was for tax evasion. You may want to consider putting your money in a shoe box and burying it in the back yard.
Some just had bad timing. Some were just doing our payroll. Some just got paid for a lot of legitimate work ahead of time, including subcontracting that we agreed to already, that we will still have to do and pay for, because it happened just beforehand and we did not have time to transfer it into our banks or onto our employees’ pay cards (and if you are doing payroll it is far far easier here to do a card to card transfer, or a wire to card transfer, than it is to deposit, wire, withdraw, deposit, withdraw, redeposit into x or xx number of accounts (in different banks, of course)).
Some of us do not live in countries that will send money directly to us without a great amount of headaches, sometimes because of people committing fraud, and just as often because the US does not agree with politics, or etc. If you are not in the US or the EU or the UK life is a lot harder, and I do not just mean in the sense of money. Most Americans do not know there are actually pockets of wealth where I am from, just as there are where you are from; there is also a lot of poverty, just as there is where you are from but you probably do not witness it as much because a lot of it is hidden from your view on a day to day basis.
Do not assume that just because somebody had (even a considerably large amount of) money in LR that it was (a) to be laundered, (b) meant to be there for a long period of time, (c) capable of being accessed without some intermediary without a great deal of hardship, (d) not just a matter of truly bad timing/fortune/luck.
The problem is with society, and politics, and inequality, and hassles, and red tape, and imperialism, and so many other things. The biggest problem is generalisation, and until that stops people from “non-Western” countries will always get screwed, which will just make people from “non-Western” countries feel justified in resenting people from “Western” countries, because we were not given the benefit of the doubt but you expect us to give you this while at the same time preventing us from living just and dignified lives. This is a big part of what leads to the very thing so many of the readers of this blog so loudly protest against. The more you create and contribute to this divide, the less anybody else will be willing to continue to stand by and be walked all over. Then it becomes retaliatory… and then retaliation becomes part of the culture, as it has since the beginning of time.
I’m not sure if you’re getting the point…
You’re just extracting the bad things.
As for every system, there’re bad people around.
I’ve personally used LR as a method of transferring funds between friends and family. I’m currently residing in Moldova where cashing out LR is possible from several offices around here for low commissions, even lower than Western Union.
Don’t involve tax, anyone making money may declare their income, even if it was through LR. I’m pretty sure there are just about the same amount of criminals at PayPal (if not even way more). International authorities have no way of controlling tax over PayPal.
The main reason why many merchants sell with LR is because charge-backs aren’t possible with LR, source: http://vps6.net – One of the biggest sever hosting companies officially accepting LR as payment method.
Again, in my opinion, if LR has been shut down, then it happened for a reason beyond your vision and knowledge.
Don’t be blind! LR was getting just better and better, threatening father US to lose control over another big financial system.
Paying more tax… You know, the government spend your money better than you do.
Some people just like Liberty!
Anders, I sensed we were in somewhat the same position by the fact we seemed to be making a lot of the same arguments. I don’t think they understand how things work because they do not live in our area. They probably also think everyone in the world actually *HAS* identification too, but this is another matter.
Let me ask you a question in return. Why does Citadel terminate their virus if it finds itself on a computer with a Russian language keyboard? Citadel’s authors don’t want their own security services coming after them, so they deliberately attack computers in other countries, counting on sovreignty to protect them from retaliation. In other words, they are COWARDS. What about the poor matreshka doll carver who had his money in LR? OK, you send me his name and address, and I’ll write Prez Obama and ask that his money be refunded. Otherwise again, COWARD for hiding behind the little guy.
Last question. You clearly want to keep your money. Would it surprise you that I want to keep mine? If I ask you to quit trying to steal from my country, will you? I’ll even PROMISE and GUARANTEE you – if you quit stealing, we’ll quit siezing your money. Isn’t that fair, or are you just whining because you got PWNED?
You can’t spell our dolls (hi saucymugwump) but that is OK.
Actually, I have a good deal for you: You can personally refund all of my money since it will no doubt go into funding your weapons and military and legal and tax breaks to rich people and (LOL) education (LOL) systems (what was I reading about how low this figure was compared to everything else?). This sounds like a fair deal to me. I hope you have plenty of money available though.
In fact if you were willing to do so I would even let you donate it to a worthy cause of my choosing instead of forcing me to ‘donate’ it to the US government for no reason of my doing whatsoever. I would not be happy being out the many thousands of dollars, but I would at least be content in knowing it went to a good cause instead of basically being stolen from me.
Find someone willing to donate this money and I may even be a bit more congenial.
Transliteration between languages is hardly definate, and if you are really that concerned about spelling, look at your compatriots posts and critique them.
I’m not going to spend another minute arguing with you or Anders, or listening to you justify theft and crime. Anders thinks “Liberty” is important, but what he means is the ability to steal without having to face the consequences. Liberty also means people get to complain to their governments about crime. Liberty means the US can gather date and share it with Costa Rica. Liberty means Costa Rica can decide the data is valid and agree to shut LR down. Liberty means Chinese hackers can get a copy of Citadel and remove the restriction on Russian keyboards. Liberty means Moldova may also get similar data from someone and decide cooperation is in their interest. Liberty means Russia may someday look to the US for help in prosecuting criminals, for the simple reason that the world is better off without computer crime.
Voksalna, you just flat out want a bribe, and all you are offering in return is to be more “congenial.” I suggested that if you stop stealing, you wouldn’t have to worry about your money being seized (yes, I spelled it wrong last time, but you were more interested in matreshka.) I promise you, I’ll do my very best to help any honest person get honestly earned money back, but you aren’t really interested in them, except as a screen you can hide behind.
I’m not a security professional, so the top level of hackers are probably smarter than me. But just as Al Capone didn’t realize, I don’t think you realize that in banking, we have the upper hand. I think you’ll see this repeated over and over and over, until someone knocks on your door and takes you somewhere unpleasant. At least then you can complain about how you’d rather be in an American prison, since here is where you steal. Be sure and write me then.
A bribe? Because I would rather see my hard-earned legitimate money used to fund feeding people of my choosing, or paying for someone of my choosing to be educated, or even donating it to your ACLU in order to fight things like this, in your world, legally — that is a *bribe*? Are you saying I should have no say over how *my money* is used? I am sure plenty of people who have lost money in this would far prefer to see the money used for just causes instead of disappearing into your legal system to fund your prisons, your SWAT teams, your agricultural stimuluses to grow corn, and your invasions abroad.
Technically if you are a soldier, I think I have probably paid for quite a lot of your enlistment since if these funds are seized permanently they will just get sucked back into your economy. Not even my own. If I had to see it get sucked into anyone’s economy it should at least be the economy from whom it was sucked.
Yeah, i’ve stole 9000 rubles yesterday from alfa bank and put them to LR, and then LR got shut down :(( I am so unlucky.
BECHED (from rdot), rdot is whitehat forum:) And carding is bad(
Greets from greens)
What happens to all of us that had funds in Liberty Reserve? Are we out of our money???
Reading butthurt comments by hackers that can’t get their botnet/child porn/carder money has made my day. I hope you guys lost a lot of money.
Thieves with a sense of entitlement in these comments – I laugh while you cry
Hackers and child porn 0_o? it’s something new… Maybe hackers are also drug dealers? And certainly Russian hackers killed Kennedy!)))
Oh you silly from_antichat! You told him about Kennedy! Now we will both be in trouble.
I love how US tries to paint LR as ‘being funded by child pornography’ etc. just because unbeknownst to anyone including the owner, money that may have been used to buy this may have passed through there. So has the majority of cash that has been circulation been used at one time or another to commit a crime (buy drugs, pay for prostitution, so on, so on).