Quote from: BurtW on September 15, 2017, 10:30:23 PM

Quote from: StillCrypto on September 15, 2017, 06:25:20 PM

Folks,

After reading this, it occurs to me that sellers most likely to ignore new buyers could include undercover agents, or people cooperating with the gov for a plea deal. The reason may be because new buyers are the most difficult to hold charges against. They may be focused on drag-netting for established buyers against whom it may be easier to cultivate extortive charges.

Therefore i urge new buyers to come here and report these sellers who, besides wasting our time, qualify to most probably be the agents that we know are lurking and trolling Localbitcoins.

[see my prior post above]

If you are a customer, that is a person that is answering an ad on localbitcoins, then they will have a very hard time calling you a business so they can arrest you. What they go after are people advertising and doing a lot of trades. These can be called businesses and therefore they can be arrested like I was.

It sounds like StillCrypto was a customer. This is not who they go after. I think it is totally silly not to do business with noobs. Their cash is as green as the customers with lots of reputation. I did most of my trades with noobs. I did it as a service to the community: to help people get their first Bitcoins, answer their questions, and meet and greet new Bitcoin enthusiasts. I do not understand this unwillingness to do business with noobs. Perhaps one of these people with this prejudice against noobs can come here and explain the reason.

On localbitcoins the safest course of action is as follows:

If you are a customer responding to an ad you should assume that the person placing the ad is either a cooperating witness, undercover agent, is working for law enforcement, working with law enforcement or is a law enforcement agent. This means that as a customer be very suspicious if they ask questions like "what do you plan to do with your Bitcoins" when you are buying or "where did you get your Bitcoins" if you are selling. If you are a customer (not placing ads) they cannot bust you for running an unlicensed business. You are a customer. They might try to bust you for something else - but from my personal experience you should not have to worry about 18-1960.

If you are an advertiser then you should assume that anyone that responds to your ads is with law enforcement. You should assume that they are making a video and audio recording of the transaction and that once they collect enough evidence that you are "running a business" they will arrest you and charge you with 18-1960 "operating a money transmittal business without a license". They do this so they can shake you down for the asset forfeiture to fund their operations. You can avoid this by getting the state money transmittal license if required by your state and getting the federal money transmittal license if your state requires a license. Otherwise you may find yourself in a federal holding facility, charged with a felony, and having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend yourself OR find yourself taking a plea deal and working undercover for law enforcement doing undercover buys and sells of Bitcoins in order to entrap other advertisers on localbitcoins.

Note: as an advertiser if you are trying to filter out law enforcement by filtering out noobs that will not work. Law enforcement has access to plenty of high reputation accounts having busted their owners and gotten the accounts as part of their plea agreements. So again, I do not understand the reluctance to doing business with a noob.

Thanks Burt.

Very sorry to hear about the terrorism raised against you. Asset forfeiture is a big issue with me. The injustice seems so obvious. The way you explained it makes it perfectly clear what they are up to, and how badly it motivates everything they do. So i can't understand why the DOJ , especially the current head, isn't aware of the injustice, or care about it enough to not crack down on it, and worse, to get deeper involved with it, with the help of weed laws. It's beyond my comprehension.

Yes, i hope some sellers will come here and explain their prejudice against noobs. I can't comprehend their position at the moment. Maybe it started with face to face transactions. We heard a lot of horror stories about those back in the day. But online transactions? How is it possible for a seller to get hurt? Unbelievable.

I'm wondering, is there some threshold of sells at which terrorists will label sellers as a "business"?

Is it better to just stick to online transactions if the intent is to reduce chances of terrorist terrorism?

Is getting a money transmitters license in-congruent with the fact that what most sellers are doing is not actually illegal?

Suppose i accept the in-congruency of the extortion scheme, is it difficult to get a money transmitters license? Costly?

Assuming i could even get one, i suppose its just a matter of filing and paying taxes at the usual rates, every year/quarter, yes?

Do you think it would be worth it to get a license? Or, what kind of volume do you think would warrant a license?

Sorry to ask such noob questions. Certainly don't answer any that might provoke more terrorism from terrorists.

[edit] Oh, one last question. Can you think of a better business model, other than Localbitcoins, for getting things done? Maybe a distributed blockchain solution?

StillCrypto