[caruana]

They are selling content through different payment services, this is not money laundering, stop being an alarmist.

"the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses"

Illegally obtained money being they key term!

> literally what the feds took down Backpage for recently.

Also, incorrect. Backpage was taken down because they facilitated human trafficking https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/501214002

[akanet]

Your mistake is in thinking that the money laundering is achieved by, say, generating a credit card charge for FOO when the item sold was BAR. Not so - the money laundering is in opening many merchant accounts purporting to be for selling FOO, generating profit sanitized as "clean," moving those profits between banks, and essentially deceiving payment processors to generate a profit.

This was, in fact, one of the actual mechanisms brought to bear against Backpage. Certainly the indictment was motivated by, you know, underage sex trafficking, but the enforcement mechanism used to achieve a verdict was mostly money laundering. You can read the indictment yourself: https://www.justice.gov/file/1050276/download. How many counts of trafficking vs money laundering do you see?

And finally, no, they are not "selling different content through other processors." These processors' entire business model is to create "legitimate," totally unrelated transactions to the credit card authorities, to take a cut, and pass back the funds to the merchant. I believe Backpage was instructing people trying to purchase ad inventory to go to a portal to purchase dog food for a while.

[vilhelm_s]

No, this is not what Backpage was prosecuted for. If you look at the indictment in your link, the money laundering counts for Backpage were:

Counts 53-62, Concealment Money Laundering "conduct ... a financial transaction which in fact involved the proceeds of ... unlawful activity knowing that the transaction was designed ... to conceal and disguise the nature ... of the specified unlawful activity"

Counts 63-68, International Promotional Money Laundering "transported ... funds .. with the intent to promote the carrying on of ... unlawful activity"

Counts 69-93, Transactional Money Laundering "engage in a monetary transaction in criminally derived property"

The point is that all of these require an underlying unlawful activity. Prostitution is illegal, and therefore it is also criminal to handle money in a way that hides that it's related to prostitution. But selling porn is legal, so the chain payments would not violate the same laws.

[caruana]

My point is the issue is not as black and white as you are making it out to be (hence, don't be an alarmist). All things are subject to interpretation and your position attempts to definitively categorize this activity as fraudulent behavior based on a 1000 word essay by a developer.

[bumholio]

> essentially deceiving payment processors to generate a profit.

That's not an illegal act, unless you can cite relevant statutes being broken. It's a contract breach.

Your whole analogy to Backpage breaks down without the initial illegal action that produces the revenue stream and sets in motion the need to launder the money.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I wouldn't say that money needs to be "illegally obtained" to be classified as laundered. There are tax benefits to "laundering" legally obtained money, for example.

Although at this point we're just arguing semantics.

[koboll]

i.e., what Paul Manafort is currently standing trial for

[moneylaundering]

Oversimplified version of most statutes:

It has to be transferred AND (1)illegally obtained, or (2)intended for an illegal purpose, or (3)disguised and international but not in any way illegal.