With the advent of electronic methods for transferring cash, small denominations can be moved quickly outside the view of watchful law enforcement officials (ergo Drug dealer can text in a payment from the privacy of a bathroom stall).

Transactions can be traced but the transaction when removed from a public street corner becomes more difficult physically to monitor. How does a law enforcement agent get permission to monitor a bank account or cell phone account when they have not witnessed a potentially illegal transaction?

here is an example of how the process could become more electronic (click to enlarge)

The image shows that a Drug Addict can text a payment to a seemingly innocent source, that of someone selling a baseball card on an auction site. The Drug Dealer can utilize a courier to transfer the drugs to the addict.

Drug addict has now become the frontline money launderer. They must put small denominations into a bank account that can be transferred to Dealer.

Drug Dealer can aggregate the funds in a bank account, and then appear to make innocent purchases or expense payments through an online bill payment system wiring money via ACH. (In a future article, we’ll look at how identity theft becomes a related problem in this process.)

Law enforcement must find a way to track and monitor potential illegal activity without having the ability to see a transaction occurring on a street corner. The courier becomes the weekest link in the transaction. Children or minors have long been targeted for this type of role even since the age of prohibition of alcohol, and might be utilized even more heavily in a more electronic age.

Electronic WalletsMoney LaunderingAnti-Money LaunderingPaypal Texting Money

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Ebay/PayPal have anounced their projects to offer the ability to transfer money via instant messaging and PayPal’s confirmation process. The concept of beaming money around is not a new idea, but it has been a long time coming in the form of a trustworth implementation. PayPal in fact created a low tech way to do this several years ago, when it allowed people to email money. Mobile devices with email capabilities could take advantage of this, but the perceived risk (real or not) of email messages from a mobile device delayed the take off.

Now PayPal intends to offer a process where a user would text a PayPal number, identify an amount and identify a destination phone number. PayPal then has an automated service call the user back to verify the transaction and enter a pin. In theory about as safe as an ATM transaction. The point is that it does not have to be 100% safe, but as safe as the status quo is perceived to be.

We’re going ot explore the dark side of this process and look at the challenges that this new technology will create for the law enforcement communicty at large. The bottom line, an electronic wallet makes it both easier and much more complicated to track criminal behavior whether it be a drug deal, money launderer or terrorist.

Improvements for Law Enforcement
Cash provides people with an anonymous method for exchanging something of value. Switching to an electronic transaction provides an electronic trail of evidence.

Today if no one witnesses a cash transaction and the serial numbers of the bills are not know and the bills are not marked, a transaction can be difficult to trace. For purposes of this article I’m going to use the example of a drug deal to illustrate the potential and pitfalls.

Simple scenario
Drug Dealer offers drugs for $100
Drug Addict Agrees, hands dealer 5 x $20 bills
Drug Dealer hands Drug addict package containing drugs
Drug Dealer repeats over and over again all day, all night, all week all month
Drug money piles up & Drug Dealer senses need to launder money (too dangerous to have a house full of money with so many Drug addicts around)
Drug Dealer finds organization to clense money by running it through business that appears to be legitimate - Business charges dealer a fee

See next Issue for the complications that come up for law enforcement when this transaction can be performed electronically. . .

EBay Plans Payments Using Cell Phones - Yahoo! News
Electronic WalletsMoney LaunderingAnti-Money LaunderingPaypal Texting Money

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Mindjet MindManager Instant Meeting Powered by WebEx

MindManager has a new integration offering focused on Web Conferencing Services. This time with WebEx. The integration looks solid enough judging it by the Quick Tour. I’d have to question the need for integration though as most web meeting software can achieve a similar result. WebEx has always seemed a bit expensive to me (ignoring MS Livemeeting rates all together).

For two thirds the monthly rate I can get a similar experience from GoTo meeting. Doesn’t include the free trial month if your new to GoToMeeting.

For any users that have tried the WebEx offer, if there is a portion of the integration that I’m missing, please fill me in. I would like to see the value in the offering if its there.

Correction - Title of this article originally published on 3-18, has been corrected from Weblink to WebEx. Body of Article corrected also.

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The Great Debate � Law in the Virtual World

In reviewing an excellent article by the authors, I was compelled to understand their debate more thoroughly by mapping / outlining some of the high points as I understood them.

Any misunderstandings of content, concept or interpretation is entirely my own if found. I would encourage readers to review the article per the hyperlink provided for the accurate perspective.

My Analysis of this document will provide a map or summary of the key questions and my understanding of the issues or conclusions.

In General, I thought a map would layout the topic more effectively than text, and needed the simplicity of a diagram to understand this debate, which at its core is very important to your truly.
Map outline

1

2

3

The final 4 questions of this debate are not covered.

Please note if you are interested in a fictional book that depicts some of the challenges of the situation as well as some analogies to likely evolutions and outcomes, I highly recommend Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson.

Technorati Tags: great debate law virtual world

Written by: Brett Bumeter, President

http://mavemappers.blogspot.com
www.softduit.com

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You won’t see too many $10,000 bills floating around. Not because your poor and not because the local gas station doesn’t have the capability to break a $100,000 bill. The main reason is that the Government has instituted a number of banking reporting requirements and controls that require financial institutions to report on transactions that exceed $10,000. In fact recent changes over the last few years, also require car dealers and other groups to report large transactions that can include amounts or combinations of amounts in the $2,000 - $3,000 range.

So if the treasury department were to print off a large number of these big bills, it would make it easier for certain nefarious types to exchange funds without having to go through a financial institution where a record can be made and reported up the chain.

Now on the other hand, if the US were to undergo a period of severe inflation or hyper inflation that resulted in a $10k dollar bill being worth what a dollar bill is worth today, they might have to print some of these bills off a little faster, so that you wouldn’t have to feed 50,000 $1’s into a change machine to wash your car.

(Not a real likely situation in the world today)

That scenario isn’t likely to happen as easily as it might have 90 years ago. As we have moved off the gold standard, it makes it easier for commodities prices to fluctuate with the fluctuation of the value of the dollar. However, during a time of severe destabilize such as was seen in Germany around the turn of the 20th century, it could be possible.

Never the less, its interesting to see one of these bills. Pictures of this one are floating on yahoo’s most viewed photos page .

$10,000 bill
Money Laundering

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