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Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
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Americans jail a 24 year old for selling bitcoins wthout asking for ID
by
alyssa85
on 05/03/2018, 15:50:37 UTC
http://everycryptonews.com/24-year-old-jailed-selling-bitcoin-without-asking-id/

Quote
US law agencies can celebrate another success in their tireless crusade to stop ‘unlicensed money transmitting’ in the land of the free. The latest victory is sending a 24-year old crime kingpin to federal prison for making $40,000 from trading bitcoin offline.

Eldon Stone Ross, a 24-year-old from Kennett Square borough of Chester County, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced on Wednesday to serve a year and a day in federal prison for buying and selling large amounts of bitcoin to people without reporting the transactions to the US government.

The young man supposedly sold $1.5 million in bitcoin for almost two years but made only $40,000 (a mere 2.6%) in commissions, which he now has to hand over to the government in addition to his year-long prison sentence. He has been convicted for conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business between January 2015 and November 2016 and failing to report the fiat to bitcoin transactions.

Ross admitted in October 2017 to selling $50,000 worth of bitcoin to undercover federal agents related to Homeland Security Investigations. In each case, they reported he “failed to obtain identifying information from the agents,” according to court records. Like in previous such cases across the US, the authorities claim that by not conducting exchange-like know-your-customer (KYC) procedures and reporting to the Department of the Treasury, the bitcoin seller was enabling money laundering.

I think he was using local bitcoins to make his sales.

People are better off buying and selling on the exchanges, because that way the responsibility to check ID lies with the exchanges and not you.