Meth Dealer Faces Loss of His Comic Book Collection 317
cultiv8 writes "According to an article from The Smoking Gun: 'A large-scale methamphetamine dealer who allegedly laundered drug profits by purchasing valuable comic books is in danger of forfeiting his 18,753-volume collection to Uncle Sam, according to a new court filing. Federal prosecutors yesterday filed a US District Court complaint seeking ownership of the comic book holdings of Aaron Castro, 30, who is facing a May trial in Colorado on narcotics distribution and weapons charges. The comics are valued in excess of $500,000.'"
He even looks like Comic Book Store guy (Score:4, Funny)
Do not bang your head against the display case, please! There is a very valuable Mary Worth inside, in which she has advised a friend to commit suicide. Thank you!
It's A Bird, It's A Plane ... (Score:2)
Re:It's A Bird, It's A Plane ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Dude, I don't think the guy reads comics.
Secondly, I think this is a clever way of laundering money. A bunch of small purchases that (should have) gone unnoticed, and then, one big sale of these on ebay while paying the income tax and paper trailing everything. Pretty smart, except for the fact that he got caught.
Re:It's Big Pharna (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not true. When people say meth they mean something that's cooked up by somebody without any quality controls and it's really not the same thing as the chemical equivalent produced by pharmaceutical corporations. Suggesting this is a tug-o-war about legitimate distribution completely misses the point. There is no QA that goes into street drugs, no screenings about medical necessity, counter indications or any way of knowing how big the effective dosage is. And the main goal of the dealer is to get the buyer hooked.
It's a very different case on either side, and trivializing it isn't helping anybody out.
Re:It's Big Pharna (Score:4, Insightful)
So let me get this straight: the difference between somebody cooking meth to sell in the Wal-mart parking lot and somebody cooking meth to sell in the Wal-mart pharmacy is quality control?
What if some illicit meth dealer did everything by the ISO standards and industry best practices?
So then what's the difference between somebody selling high-quality Blueberry Yum Yum with the little purple hairs and buds as big and juicy as cucumbers and Big Pharma selling some pills that deliver THC without the "making you feel good" part and charging $45 per pill to cancer patients who can't eat because of the chemo and their insurance company won't cover anyway?
If your point is that pharmaceutical companies are a very ugly part of the corporate tyranny that's working to keep people from having options or power, then I absolutely agree. If your point is that "illicit" drugs are a scourge because they don't come with a page of contraindications and possible side effects in 3-point type that's usually full of contradictory and misleading information anyway, then I'm not sure we're on the same page.
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Pretty much. I doubt most doctors with their limited patient interaction are actually doing a thorough diagnosis and checking for contradictions. The difference pretty much comes down to purity, amount used, and route of administration.
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Oh, I agree. You see, I'm not arguing so much against the need for pharmaceutical companies as for the need for pot farmers and dealers.
Unfortunately, as long as the former has so much power, the latter will always have to be on the margins of society, working in dangerous, sketchy circumstances. I don't believe our marijuana laws exist so much because of the puritanical nature of our politicians or citizens as because of the power of the pharma lobby and the powe
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Well, yes, there's more to it than just a squabble over who gets to produce the drug, but there's many actions on the part of the 'legitimate' side that give just that impression. It isn't the people cooking street meth that claim methamphetamine itself causes ulceration and loss of teeth - it's the DEA, saying that such symptoms are caused by abusing even the purest meth, not by any of the many adulterants or flaws in the street process. If the government is really out to protect people from the risks of c
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Yeah because meth has a legitimate medical use? Maybe you should try living in a community that has been devastated by meth. Then you might realize how trite and banal you college brat fight the man bullshit sounds.
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Desoxyn is approved for ADHD and weight loss. So according to the feds it does have a legitimate medical use. And all you need is a prescription from your doctor.
Re:It's Big Pharna (Score:4, Funny)
Did you bring enough for the whole class?
Why is this here? (Score:5, Funny)
I can't for the life of me figure out why this merits a Slashdot story. Even if you conclude "Slashdot readers are geeks, geeks have comic book collections" it's pretty unlikely that many Slashdot readers use their collections to launder drug money.
Re:Why is this here? (Score:4, Interesting)
It means a comic book collection worth $500,000 will be going on sale at auction at bargain basement prices.
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It might not be relevant because of how the money was laundered but how the money was obtained. Judging by many posts on Slashdot there just HAS to be mind altering substances involved. Maybe we need a poll asking what controlled substances people are taking right now.
Re:Why is this here? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? How about the fact that the government is seeking ownership of half a million dollars in posessions that belong to a man who has not yet been convicted? Should you lose your comic or game collection or your car or even your home for merely being *accused* and tried for a crime? If the government has any business taking your property at ANY time, shouldn't it at least be AFTER you are CONVICTED? You know, when you've been found to actually be GUILTY?
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Actually, you shouldn't lump the 4 boxes comment in with the rest of them, it's a legitimate observation. The main disagreement is over how long to wait before transitioning to the next box, and what precisely justifies doing so. But it is absolutely correct, one shouldn't overthrow the government when lesser measures will fix the problem, and one shouldn't use a soap box when only force will solve it.
Re:Why is this here? (Score:5, Informative)
All that would take is an expansion of civil forfeiture, not even a huge one.
Civil forfeiture is a bad, bad thing, even in concept. It's kind of hard to argue that the government should be able to confiscate arbitrary sections of your personal wealth and then sue the property (not you but the property itself which being neither a citizen nor a person has less rights than you do) and claim ownership of such if they can demonstrate that it's more likely that this property was the proceeds of some crime than that it wasn't.
So yeah, they sue your possessions (which lack civil rights) and have a lower burden of proof since it's a civil case. Basically so that they can claim any wealth belonging to anyone accused of drug violations, and likely do so even if they are found innocent.
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It's for the "fuck the government" segment of Slashdot readers. ... like claiming the major political parties are the same, that Americans are no better off than North Koreans
That's more the anti-war / anti-corporation left. Being anti-drug war doesn't require hating the government at all, just wanting to end one huge misguided effort.
Meth dealer? I'm sure he was just a misunderstood amateur chemist.
Morally, how is he any different from someone with a still? Keep in mind, that was completely illegal at one point, and moonshine was the "hard" stuff at the time.
And, again, he only has to deal with criminals because it's been criminalized. He's only "laundering" the money, which is a melodramatic way of saying exchanging it, because the governmen
Re:Why is this here? (Score:4, Interesting)
If only. What we have here is that he is an ALLEGED meth dealer. They WILL be taking his comics through the absurdist legal fiction of suing the comic books themselves! (Yes, literally, the case is "United States Of America vs. 18,753 comic books"!) They do that so they can avoid invoking the Constitutional rights accorded to a person in court. They conveniently gloss over the (former) owner's 5th amendment rights by claiming that he's not involved. They might or might not bother with trying to prove this guy guilty of anything in a court of law once they get his property. Being found not guilty in a criminal trail will in no way allow him to recover his seized property. The system's rigged to not allow for that.
IF they first prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is a meth dealer, THEN I would be OK with them taking the comics as part of his sentence, but only if the proceeds from their sale did not go back to the police, DA, or judge (except by passing through the general fund). Otherwise it creates a perverse incentive to railroad people for their possessions.
Re:Why is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Post something derogatory about ObamaCare or that the extraordinary claims of the global warming alarmists aren't backed up by extraordinary proof and see where you get modded.
For the record, it's not the fact that you're against the health care law that makes us write you off as a right-wing nutjob. It's the fact that you feel the need to use thead hominem portmanteau "ObamaCare", which indicates that you were merely handed your view from Glenn Beck. There's a lot of things wrong with our health care system, but the solution is NOT to simply be against health care in general. We spend twice as much of our GDP on health care as any other country, and we spend a greater amount on Medicare (divided evenly among the population, not just those who benefit from it) than Canada does on universal health care.
As for "Global Warming", it's the same problem. It has been long established that "global warming" was a misleading term, and we switched to "climate change" somewhere in the mid 90s. But yeah, tell you what.. Go get a PhD in Climate Science. If you still think it's a hoax, then we'll discuss it. Until then, I'm going to listen to the scientists who have actually studied the subject.
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The term obamacare is used everywhere from NPR to newspaper here in Europe.
You mean the newspapers that Rupert Murdoch bought?
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I think it's more of a cultural thing. Not that I live in the US and understand your politics (does anyone?) but from outside it looks like you've got a big group of people who don't look terribly carefully at what their politicans do, are easily whipped up into a frenzy, and have a fairly simplistic approach to their religion that says more about them and the culture they live in than it does about the religion itself.
Mind you, I hang out with a bunch of extremely left-wing christians, in a country with a
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I think it's more of a cultural thing. Not that I live in the US and understand your politics (does anyone?) but from outside it looks like you've got a big group of people who don't look terribly carefully at what their politicans do, are easily whipped up into a frenzy, and have a fairly simplistic approach to their religion that says more about them and the culture they live in than it does about the religion itself.
Looks like you understand our politics better than you think. Now, I've read somewhere that there's a "religious gene", and given the fact that this country was founded by puritans, it makes sense that we would have this level religiosity. I just wish more Christians realized that Jesus was a pinko commie liberal.
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You speak in weasel words, much like Glenn Beck. "I didn't say what my my views are on the health care act. I'm just asking what happens when you suggest that it's raping your women and killing your children", and so forth. You clearly implied that you think "obamacare" is bad and that "global warming" is a hoax. The fact that you didn't state it explicitly is irrelevant. Unless you're telling me that those are not your views, then I'd say I've inferred correctly.
on "global warming":
Re:Why is this here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Geeks have a predilection toward the libertarian view.
I think you're confusing correlation with causality.
Poorly-socialized people, who think they're smarter than everyone else and that if other people weren't stopping them they'd basically rule the world...have a predilection towards the libertarian view. (Unless they're poor, then they usually become criminals, instead.)
Read what you will about 'geeks' from that. ;)
I can say that, I used to be a libertarian. (And am a geek.) Then I realized I pretty lucky in life and not as smart as I thought. I'm intelligent, but I can't out-clever the world. No one has enough knowledge to never be conned. No one can be smart enough or aware enough to keep all unscrupulous people from harming them. No one can see the future to always predict every disaster, and even if they could, they often couldn't deal with it even if they knew in advance.
Once you get into the actual world and start interacting with society, you realize just how vapid libertarian thought is, or at least how those people understand libertarian thought, which is basically 'Smart people don't need protection or safety nets, and I'm a smart people! I should get to choose what I'm protected from, and never have to spend any money on taxes to cover me in case something bad happens!'.
There are, indeed, non-vapid libertarians, actual libertarians, out there, and the test is currently 'Do you care more about a) the government forcing you to be insured, or b) the fact the military is forcing an unconvicted Bradley Manning to sleep in the nude?'. If you said B, this post is not about you, even if you intend, at some point, to get around to dealing with A.
But almost every libertarian I've met in real life, including me when I was one, and about half the 'libertarian writers' online, are incredibly vapid and shallow and whose entire idea of freedom is 'People should be able to sell things that are dangerous, and not pay taxes to cover them if they happen to buy things that are dangerous', instead of, you know,actual freedoms, like a right to a trial. They are as I described in the first paragraph of this post.
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I'm not sure that capitalism has anything to do with freedom and small government. In fact it seems that capitalism requires a pretty big government to remove everyone's freedoms before it can even exist.
How can you even run a private capitalist farm in a field without big government goons coming along and removing the freedoms of everyone else to farm there?
Re:TRWTF is YRO (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, what does the government seeking ownership of your property before you're even found guilty of a crime have to do with your rights?
Illegal fines (Score:2, Informative)
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I did not go to your links, but would you please care to elaborate? I don't recall the "witches" in Salem dealing with drugs, and neither did the Nazis. And the only drug sold by the catholic church is religion, which is unfortunately legal.
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Nutshell: The Salem Witch Trials were a farce to effect a land grab from property owners.
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Not to mention a superstitious overreaction to ergot [wikimedia.org] poisoning caused by eating infected rye grain.
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Ah, ok and that trial for dealing meth is just a farce to grab his comic books. Thanks or enlightening me.
Serious, I believe that they just want to make sure that these assets are still there when the trial is over, and he will get them back when not proven guilty.
Re:Illegal fines (Score:5, Insightful)
They could freeze or seize assets until after the trial finds someone guilty or innocent if they wanted - but they don't. Instead they sue the items themselves under a rediculous legal theory so as to bypass the owners 5th amendment rights and get the lower burden of proof required under civil law. If the accussed drug dealer is found not guilty there is no return of assets, replacement, or money received from the sale given to them. Regardless of the outcome of the criminal trial the assets are permanently and irrevocably gone and typically the money from the sale goes into the police coffers. This creates a perverse incentive to lay insufficiently founded drug charges against people with easily disposed of assets to fundraise for chronically underfunded police departments. Worse yet, in some jurisdictions, the sales go primarily to police and their friends at dramatically below market value who then turn around and sell them a second time at more reasonable rates and pocket the profit. Even in the cases where the charges are laid in good faith, the disposal of assets prior to conviction and failure to compensate is profoundly contrary to the way the legal system is intended to operate.
In this particular case, the charges are probably legitimately laid against someone who there is reasonable evidence of commiting the crime. The farce is that even if he can prove that he didn't, he is still out $500,000 without legal recourse.
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Being ACCUSED of something is not justification for stealing your property from you. Well, it IS . . . people have their cars and other property stolen by the government all the time for merely being ACCUSED rather than being accused, tried, and convicted of a crime, first. But it SHOULDN'T be justification.
Yes, when you purchased that property through illegal sources of money the government confiscates it. Boohoo. It's not as if they just trumped up a bunch of charges in order to steal his comic books.
Yeah, you're right. Let's not even bother with a trial! He MUST be guilty because the gubmint has telled us so!
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You must have missed the part where he has yet to stand trial for any criminal activity, so he is only alleged to have laundered drug profits. They will likely have already taken his comics before he ever sees the inside of a courtroom. They will also take anything else he might use to fund a vigorous defense. Being found not guilty will not get him his stuff back.
Where's the news here? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is absolutely normal that the assets made with crimes get confiscated. Maybe except for the not so usual form of investment, why is this worthy mentioning?
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You're right- it's not very newsworthy. But you're halfway to a possible answer. The other half is because to geeks the seizing of one's comics stash might seem cruel.
Add in some good old Slashdot libertarianism and you've got a bit of constitutional humor.
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The fact that there are presumably in the near future going to be $500k worth of comic books going up on government auction. It doesn't sound like these were seized for evidence, but were being seized as spoils of crime. They'll get auctioned off and I'll wager a lot of /. posters will be interested.
The question though is why this is a YRO story. It happened in real life and not online, it's been well established that the government can seize property purchased with stolen or otherwise illegally obtained mo
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So, you want to advocate that e. g. a thief should be allowed to keep what he stole?
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Because they're making the grab for his assets before proving him guilty of a crime?
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That's also normal. I bet that also his bank accounts are frozen until he's proven guilty or not. Without that, there would never be anything left over to confiscate after the trial.
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I agree fully that it is unconstitutional and unconscionable, yet it is done all the time. Start here [wikipedia.org], then Google "asset forfeiture". Be sure to have a barf bag handy, it's absolutely sickening that this happens in any supposedly civilized country.
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GFY. People advocating death sentence should be hanged.
Anyone finding irony here - keep it!
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Smug anti-death penalty people should be imprisoned for life at massive taxpayer expense.
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Smug, ignorant pro-death penalty people should be executed by the state at still greater expense.
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So... still you?
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"Anti-death" penalty? Oh, you mean an injection of immortality serum! What crime do I have to commit for that penalty?
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I think they just want to avoid that there is no more property when the trial ends. Just like a suspect's bank accounts are frozen until the case is closed.
War on drugs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:War on drugs (Score:5, Insightful)
I totally agree with that. The war should not be "on drugs", but on the reasons why people chose taking them.
Re:War on drugs (Score:4, Interesting)
that would be a war on society, then.
society (its complexity) causes people to need to 'get away' from that very society.
interesting, huh?
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So we should spend those resources on reforming the more aversive aspects of society.
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War on those aspects of society that make people chose to take drugs (in unhealthy manners). For example the massive pressure to achieve wealth and/or power in our western society, caused by the big lie capitalism is built on - that everyone can "make" it, if he just works hard enough.
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I totally agree with that. The war should not be "on drugs", but on the reasons why people chose taking them.
War on friends, peer pressure, and addiction?
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War on false friends and lack of self-esteem. And except for the poor babies of addicted mothers, no one is born with an addiction, you develop that. I know what I'm talking about here.
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War on lacking other, healthier methods to relax.
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I totally agree with that. The war should not be "on drugs", but on the reasons why people chose taking them.
Or maybe it shouldn't be called a war at all? I don't think it's unreasonable to say we should reserve war for our mortal enemies.
This tendency of declaring war on arbitrary things goes back to progressives, such as Woodrow Wilson, who saw the military as a means of organizing and unifying society. That's why, for example, he declared a "war on poverty." You still see it with modern liberals, like Rahm Emanuel, who proposed "basic training, civil defense preparation, and community service" for everyone aged
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Erm, the War on Poverty was from President Lyndon B. Johnson, not Woodrow Wilson.
And it's sorta silly to pretend it's just the left that uses 'war' now. Nixon invented 'War on Drugs'. Also 'War on Cancer' for some reason. (This was back when we thought all cancer might be caused by a single virus, instead of the dozens of things that cause it.)
The War on (some) Drugs and War on Terror are the only militarized 'Wars'...the War on Poverty was just the idea we should put as many resources towards ending pove
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Well, I take alcohol because a little bit makes me outgoing. But I don't think stopping me from wanting to be friendly is the answer. Indeed I don't think my drug-taking is a problem in the first place.
It's impossible to understand the drugs issue while you use the word 'drug' to refer only to substances which aren't sufficiently mainstream to remain legal. The notion that there's some sort of fundamental difference between popular drugs and drugs only taken by a small minority, to the point that the latter
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Well, I take alcohol because a little bit makes me outgoing. But I don't think stopping me from wanting to be friendly is the answer.
Correct. But the answer is to learn how to socialize without ethanol or other substances as a crutch. It may work for you, but for many people this way leads down the drain.
Indeed I don't think my drug-taking is a problem in the first place.
Yes, many people consuming drugs (legal or illegal) don't run into serious problems with that. But around 10 percent develop an addiction, and a good part of the other 90 percent tend to an unhealthy consume.
What I meant with "war on the reasons" was that normally people have a reason why they develop unhealthy substance consume. Some ca
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If you mean Ted Kaczynski, he WAS in fa
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That would be correct. It was that Ted Kaczynski.
However, you are guilty of committing an ad hominem attack. His sending mail bombs and possibly being a crazy person does not make his other writings true or false.
You should take what he claims on its own merits and judge if they are correct or not by the evidence given. And from his commentary regarding the USA turning into a bunch of pill munchers to placate their boring lives, I would say he is correct.
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You can get lunatic from his writings as well.
The manifesto 'sort of' sound logical, hence fooled many reporters. It also fit into many of their hippie world views.
Read the damn things for yourself, I did when they were first published. He was schizophrenic. His thoughts jump, one thing doesn't follow another. He bases the rest of his diatribe on initial insane conclusions and draws still insaner conclusions. IIRC his initial insane conclusion was that 'everybody is powerless'. Find where he started to
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No, I don't agree with that at all.
If you actually take the time to look, progressives in the 18th century (and, rarely, earlier) were discussing at length the health risks of tobacco smoking, the inhumanity of slavery, feminism and women's suffrage, socialism, anarchism, democracy, republicanism, and the dehumanizing effects of a modern, technological society. Granted, some of these people might have been branded crackpots, heretics, or vile traitors, but they were out there.
I do not support the philosoph
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Ted Kaminsky (sp) wrote that when people are living a more and more pointless life and utterly domesticated life, they will sometimes turn to drugs in order to keep themselves placated, and continue to believe that things make sense.
Yep, that's what I meant. If we would put the same amount of resources (manpower, money, ...) that we waste on that impossible-to-win "war on drugs" to the task of improving our society, life would be better for almost everyone.
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Anytime you have a large number of people who are that self centered you end up where we are currently. The reality is that it's as much the drug users that are causing the problems as the prohibitionists. Pretending otherwise is pretty dishonest, if you buy drugs you're likely to be funding narco-terrorism. I mean where precisely do you think the drug cartels get their money from?
Suggesting that it's more the prohibitionists fault than the people who are buying the banned substances is questionable at bes
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I mean where precisely do you think the drug cartels get their money from?
From selling drugs?
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Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it certainly isn't working for drugs.
Per capita consumption of beer in the U.S., 1911-1915, 29 gallons.
In 1934, 13 gallons.
In the prosperous mid-fifties, 23 gallons. Drinking in America: A History [hoboes.com]
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What that statistic, in addition to the fact that the population switched en mass to hard liquor from beer, doesn't mention is that prohibition resulted in vastly more women and children drinking. Before, it was essentially unthinkable for women to drink in public. Afterward, check out any picture of a speakeasy.
Prohibition is an interesting story, but it's important to realize it wasn't about 'drinking' per se. Prohibition was about the fact that men would get blackout drunk, and fail to support their fam
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Just because the laws on Marijuana are poorly thought out, ineffective, and unnecessary doesn't mean that all drug laws are.
Prohibition is necessary in the case of hard drugs. Its true that we need to attack it from all angles, but legalization and taxation of most of the illegal drugs would be a societal disaster the scale of which we have never seen.
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Just because the laws on Marijuana are poorly thought out, ineffective, and unnecessary doesn't mean that all drug laws are.
Prohibition is necessary in the case of hard drugs. Its true that we need to attack it from all angles, but legalization and taxation of most of the illegal drugs would be a societal disaster the scale of which we have never seen.
Alcohol and tobacco are legalised and taxed. If neither of them are hard drugs, I don't know what is.
Before we prohibited heroin in this country (UK), there were only about 500 addicts in the whole country, and they could still live their lives with a reasonable amount of normality. Prohibition came, and now 50,000 risk death from adulterated doses of uncertain strength and are forced by prohibitionists to steal or sell themselves to pay black-market prices.
I'd like the societal disaster back.
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A disaster? Why?
Please state the actual problems that heroin addition causes that happy is guaranteed a continual supply of heroin:
Oh, that's right, there aren't any. In fact, a lot of soldiers got addicted to heroin, given as a painkiller, in WWI and managed to go decades by just, you know, buying heroin and taking it every day. Not saying it's a good thing, but it's hardly going to destroy society.
LSD? No known health effects, and, incidentally, flashbacks are a myth.
Ecstasy? You can dehydrate eas
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Most of the problems with the lighter drugs (like Pot) have to do with the fact that the drug is illegal. As such, legalization would go a long way (but not all the way) to minimizing the harm that they do. The other step would be to regulate the drugs such that i
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I don't think we should allow any profit on cocaine, PCP, or meth, or any recreational drug more addictive than caffeine or alcohol. (Or, let's say, any drug that can kill you with withdrawal.) Or allow any branding, or anything.
You want to buy them, you go to a free clinic or something, and convince them you're addicted. Then you go to a pharmacy, which will sell it to you at the cost the government supplies it to them. That's it. No profit. In fact, the pharmacy is actually out some employee time. (That
19k comic books? (Score:2)
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He was using the proceeds of his criminal enterprise to buy comic books, some of the larger sales apparently attracted some attention and upon investigation it was determined where the money was coming from. It has to be settled in court whether or not he's guilty, but assuming he is, this is standard procedure. Criminals aren't typically allowed to profit from their crimes by buying things.
Comic Books ; houses -- what's the difference? (Score:2)
If he had been trading houses to launder his drug money, this wouldn't have made page 34 of his local paper, much less the front page of Slashdot. Even so, there's not a whole lot to say about it.
Gosh, I hope he gets a single cell (Score:3)
Can you imagine the place in prison hierarchy for comic book guy?
Sex, drugs and comic books... although since this is comic book guy, he probably skipped on sex... until now.
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One of the (many, many) things I detest about prison rape jokes is that it's really a serious problem. If you're condoning rape as an acceptable sentence from your country's justice system... then I don't know what to say. If you just haven't thought about it, you might want to.
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Police confiscating evidence is not news (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy is allegedly laundering money with the comic books. The police are confiscating the evidence. What makes this unusual?
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They aren't confiscating evidence, they are taking ownership. The police are suing the comic books for the tort of being bought with drug money. (Yes, the comics themselves are the defendant of record!). They are doing this well in advance of the person's criminal trial. In other words, they are presuming his guilt and circumventing his 5th amendment rights through the absurd practice of suing an inanimate object.
If they would care to prove him guilty in a court of law and the law allows loss of proceeds t
Is the Bad Lieutnant still working (Score:2)
This would have been great on Miami Vice! (Score:4, Funny)
Crockett: "I need a new Ferrari! Didn't we confiscate anything from drug dealers that I can drive!?!?!"
Castillo: "Sorry, Sonny, no. But here, read some Incredible Hulk, Spider Man and Richie Rich. It will cheer you up.
This is called 'Laundering' (Score:4, Informative)
Assuming the facts are presented correctly, what this guy was doing is simple old fashioned money laundering. He was buying something with drug money so he could later sell it and have clean money. Comic books are actually a smart way to do this, its unlikely that anyone would suspect it.
Here's an example of how it may have worked:
1. Dude sells $500 of meth.
2. Dude takes the $500 cash to a comic book convention.
3. Dude buys a comic book for ~$500
4. Dude sells the same comic book for $450 in clean, crisp, legal bills
5. Repeat 1-4
6. Profit!
7.?
8. Prison!
Re:This is called 'Laundering' (Score:4, Insightful)
Except the story didn't say anything about him selling comics. Just buying them. Buying over 18,000 of them.
“Gwinn said that Aaron began to struggle with money because he would spend his drug money on comic books.”
It would be funny if he turned to meth dealing as a way to finance his addictive comic book collection habit.
Imagine... (Score:2)
Fucking good! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't hold any sympathy for anyone in the Meth food chain. If this were Joe the pot guy losing his collection, I'd be just a bit bummed. But this is an entirely different ballgame. There's a whole class of drugs out there that really are "bad" drugs, and meth is one of 'em. Show me someone who's been smoking pot for 30 years, then go and try to find someone who's been doing meth for 30 years. Aside from a lack of motivation and a glorious set of man boobs, the pot head's probably ok. The meth user has probably either been dead for twenty years or in jail. The incredible screw job that meth does to your neurochemistry makes anything Glaxo SmithKlien is doing look like two cups of coffee and a mountain dew chaser.
A couple of apocryphal internet stories for you; A friend of mine moonlighted as a prison shrink while stationed in the Pacific Northwest in the AF. He ended up dealing with a lot of the royally fucked up folks. Those who weren't either A. genuine psychopaths or B. the products of horribly fucked up situations were meth addicts. According to him, the nicest guy he dealt with was an actual axe murderer who hacked up a couple of people while tweaked. Once he was in prison and clean, he wasn't a bad person.
My wife is a librarian. When we lived in northern Indiana, one of the more common problems that rural libraries faced was the loss of children's books due to meth lab exposure. The kids would check the book out, take it home, and it would come back reeking of the various chemicals the poor kid was being exposed to at home. If this guy spent any time around production, these comics are toast.
In short, fuck this guy. You want to bitch about the big bad government and your civil liberties? You want to be all cool and snarky by throwing a (tm) after the phrase "war on drugs", go do it on a norml forum. When it comes to tweaks, fuck 'em, there ain't a hole deep enough.
Re: (Score:2)
And where exactly do I say that? If and when he's convicted, lock him up and be done with him. He's as entitled to due process as anyone else, and that's what he's getting right now.
Nobody Seems to Grasp The Government Abuse, Here. (Score:5, Informative)
I've read enough comments here that seem to completely miss what is going on here and are completely ignorant on the abuse by our government in violating the Fourth Amendment. The assumption by everyone seems to be one of two things. Either the police are seizing property as evidence of a crime committed (in which case, you would presume it will be returned if he's found innocent) or that he has been found guilty and they're taking his ill-gotten gains.
That is not the case.
What they're doing is taking possession of someone's property. Someone who has not been convicted of a crime through a fair trial, yet. Then they're going to sell it and keep the profit. Does that sound right to you? Shouldn't you receive a trial and be found guilty of a crime, before paying for that crime?
In fact, not only do you not have to be found guilty through trial of an actual crime in this country for the government to steal your property and sell it for themselves, but you don't have to even be charged with a crime, in many cases. I went looking for something to explain it to those who care to be enlightened (by what I thought was common knowledge, but by the reactions on Slashdot to this article, seems to be foreign to 80% of us). I actually found a well composed video that from the Institute for Justice
(video 2m30s) - Policing for Profit - The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture [ij.org]
Essentially, what has been happening for about thirty years, is that instead of charging YOU with a crime, the government charges your PROPERTY with a crime. Your property can't defend itself, so it is assumed "guilty". They take the property, sell it at auction, and then split it up among various government departments. All without YOU being convicted. Or even tried in a court of law. Or even being charged with a crime. It is currently a billion-dollar scam in this country.
So save your "durr durr meth dealer bad!" bullshit. You aren't a hard-ass for saying "throw away the key!" or "execute this guy!" or "he deserves it!". You just look ignorant for not considering the due process we have in this country that protects people like you and me from being railroaded without evidence. Maybe the guy IS guilty. That's fine. If he's guilty, throw the book at him. The mere fact that someone has charged him with a crime doesn't mean he deserves punishment nor that he deserves to have his property stolen from him, auctioned off, and then split amongst his local government agencies.
Re: (Score:2)
But...but...they are his retirement fund! In 50 years he'll be able to sell them to some other obese nerd who will then put them away as their retirement fund! Comic books will never lose value! THEY HAVE COLLECTOR'S VALUE!!!!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
At least he didn't invest in beanie babies.
Google: Will Eisner at 94 (Score:2)
These comic books may be expensive, but I doubt that they're valuable.
Today's Google Doodle is a tribute to Will Eisner and The Spirit [google.com]
It took a long time for the comic book to gain respectability as the "graphic novel."
But the Americam comic strip and comic book have attracted some very gifted artists and writers from the beginning. The Will Eisner Hall of Fame [wikipedia.org]