Person Linked To Scam Asks FBI for His Seized Cryptocurrency Back (404media.co) 46
A person linked to a scam that tricked an elderly victim into transferring more than $100,000 formally requested the FBI give back his seized cryptocurrency, claiming in a petition to the agency that he is a part-time crypto investor and not doing anything illegal, according to a recently filed court record. From a report: 404 Media also reached the person by email and they largely repeated the same story. The request is an unusual sight, and, to be frank, probably not going to work. In the court record, authorities allege that the frozen funds are linked to a scam of a victim in the U.S. The document says authorities seized just under 18,500 Tether, valued at around $18,500, in July with a federal search warrant.
"Hello Sir/Ma'am, My name is Vishal Gautam," the request starts. "The funds which you have on hold that is a very big amount of money for me and my family, I request you to please release it from your custody. Thank You & Regards." The message says that Gautam lives in India and as well as investing in cryptocurrency, he is a "full-time Health Insurance" worker. "In the month of July 2023 suddenly my crypto from Binance got disappeared, I don't know how it happened but then I got to know that the FBI has put hold on my assets," the message continues. "I am not into something illegal and never will be, I will not do any such thing that can harm your country or your people in any manner." U.S. authorities, meanwhile, allege that the seized cash is connected to a fraud scheme that targeted a senior citizen in Knoxville, Iowa. In February, this victim opened an email on her iPad that claimed it had been compromised, and that she needed to contact the sender for assistance, according to the court record.
"Hello Sir/Ma'am, My name is Vishal Gautam," the request starts. "The funds which you have on hold that is a very big amount of money for me and my family, I request you to please release it from your custody. Thank You & Regards." The message says that Gautam lives in India and as well as investing in cryptocurrency, he is a "full-time Health Insurance" worker. "In the month of July 2023 suddenly my crypto from Binance got disappeared, I don't know how it happened but then I got to know that the FBI has put hold on my assets," the message continues. "I am not into something illegal and never will be, I will not do any such thing that can harm your country or your people in any manner." U.S. authorities, meanwhile, allege that the seized cash is connected to a fraud scheme that targeted a senior citizen in Knoxville, Iowa. In February, this victim opened an email on her iPad that claimed it had been compromised, and that she needed to contact the sender for assistance, according to the court record.
Sucks (Score:2)
Oh boy it really sucks when someone takes money you've been saving up for retirement eh?
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He scammed that money fair n square! (Score:2)
Fascist FBI won't give back his business profits! Bastards!
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Donald?!? Is that you?
He makes most of his money now from donations, from suckers ...
Linked to (Score:1)
A man is innocent until proven guilty. Even if he's guilty the government doesn't have the right to take everything he has. If we maintain this trend They will be able to steal your car for a parking ticket.
Re: Linked to (Score:3)
They can seize property if they believe it is associated with a crime.
If innocent or acquitted, he gets it back.
If he is proven guilty, oopsee!!!
That's how the system works.
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If THE PROPERTY is innocent or acquitted
Re: Linked to (Score:5, Insightful)
You're innocent until proven guilty; they should not be allowed to seize anything from innocent people.
Re: Linked to (Score:4)
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I think it is abused a lot more often than you are suggesting. I understand the reasoning you are using, and it does make sense, but for a speculative endeavor it's also a good way to cause a failure. Or if you need the money to pay off a loan.
There needs to be a better way. You shouldn't be penalized just because the government (i.e. someone in the government) accused you, and their associates went along with it. (This is part of the reason public defenders generally do such a lousy job. They need to
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I don't know whether the French system is better or worse, but it is different. Your idea of having experimental proof to prove one better than the other seems like an impossible task. How is it possible to objectively verify that?
The idea of being judged by your peers sounds great until you look at many examples of juries being utterly biased as your peers completely agree with your crimes - think murders of black people in the 1950s southern US - or the converse, a black plack person falsely charged with
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But you are citing experimental proof.
The Napoleonic system invests increased power in the government. Is this better or worse? It really depends on whether the government is acting to protect or subjugate the populace. Certainly we hear about the French populace rioting against the government more often, but that doesn't happen in Louisiana, which has a Napoleonic system. (Well, actually it's more complex than that, and Louisiana only uses code Napoleon for civil law, not criminal law. So the comparis
Civil Forfeiture [Re: Linked to] (Score:5, Interesting)
They can seize property if they believe it is associated with a crime.If innocent or acquitted, he gets it back.
Maybe ... if he has the time and money to pursue years of lawsuits. https://www.reuters.com/legal/... [reuters.com]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
If he is proven guilty, oopsee!!!
They also take money (or other things) that are "associated" with a crime, even if no one is proven guilty. This is called "civil forfeiture", and the burden of proof is opposite to that of a criminal case: you have to prove that what they take is not associated with a crime to get it back.
https://www.vox.com/2015/7/8/8... [vox.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/i... [forbes.com]?
https://www.heritage.org/resea... [heritage.org]
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I'm sure all those Ferraris being driven by drug lords were purchased with clean money unrelated to their drug empires.
Re:Civil Forfeiture [Re: Linked to] (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure all those Ferraris being driven by drug lords were purchased with clean money unrelated to their drug empires.
It's not Ferraris being driven by drug lords that are being seized. It's ordinary sedans driven by people who have fifty dollars worth of meth in the car, or a couple of joints. https://www.reuters.com/legal/... [reuters.com]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
https://reason.com/2021/12/08/... [reason.com]
I assume you didn't bother to read any of the links, and don't read the news. Here's a couple of good articles summarizing civil forfeiture, which I assume you won't read either.
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/14... [vox.com]
https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com]
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cause Ferrari's have lawyers on call.
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No drug lord has ever lost a car? Every car is a poor person.
You're using Vox as a source. I read Vox for giggles. Not news or facts.
Your others aren't much better. If I have you Breitbart you'd laugh in my face yet you give me Vox as a serious link. Ridiculous.
Jfc, smh
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That's one reason why I gave ten links, not just one: because I can count on ideological blockheads to always say "oh, I don't credit that source" whenever confronted with facts.
When you have to say "oh, I don't credit any source," from Vox to Reason and everything in between, it makes it pretty clear that the reason you don't credit it isn't the source, it's that you aren't going to read anything that doesn't confirm your pre-existing conclusions.
I stand by what I said:
I assume you didn't bother to read any of the links, and don't read the news. Here's a couple of good articles summarizing civil forfeiture, which I assume you won't read either
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Your links are all the same trash sources. I picked on Vox as the worst but didn't feel it was necessary to point out that the New Yorker, USA Today , and even Reuters have a bad history of clear bias. The fact you'd even provide a Vox link as a serious makes your entire line of reasoning suspect and unworthy of being taken seriously.
Next time don't spew out a hundred links of trash. Find one quality link and we'll have something to discuss. The fact you chose quantity over quality said all I needed to
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When you dismiss pretty all sources of information, your opinions can never be falsified by facts.
The fact that you don't even give a hint of what you accept as a "quality link" leaves you free to dismiss any other links I give just as casually as you dismissed the ten already posted.
But I can answer that question. A "quality link," in your opinion, is one that never mentions facts that disagree with you.
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Or try this one: https://ij.org/report/frustrat... [ij.org]
"Not only did police often seize small amounts of cash and low-value cars—hardly the stuff of drug kingpins—but the city often forfeited property from people never proven guilty of anything."
"Ferraris being driven by drug lords" yeah right.
"...half of seizures were worth less than $600, and police seized as little as $25 in cash, a cologne gift set worth $20 and crutches.
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and crutches
Absolutely brutal
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The drug lords driving Ferraris have lawyers. Seizing their property is hard.
Seizing some poor guy who is taking a few thousand dollars someplace is simply and easy. They don't need to find any evidence of a crime and/or charge anyone and/or convict anyone they only need to assert the cash was proceeds of a crime and seize it. Easy to do on a person does not trust banks and has no resources to get a lawyer to get it back (or the lawyer will cost way more than the money they are getting back). Hard t
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There are a fuck ton of drug lord cars on auction all across the country. They typically do an auto auction 2-4 times a year.
I dunno where you get the idea drug lord cars aren't being gathered and resold a *lot*.
Lawyers aren't magical. Drug lord caught red handed is gunna need a new fleet of cars.
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I did not say they weren't not being gathered. I said it takes more proof for a drug dealer with a lawyer, and in those cases they convicted the dealer and/or actually found guns and/or guns in the car.
The cash seizures (from poor people) do not take the sort of documentation (or any proof) that seizing a car from someone who can afford a lawyer takes. The abuse is on cash that really takes no documentation and/or even a real paper trail.
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It just takes longer. They still lose everything.
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Read the article you'll see it's more than just a casual link. He's a scammer bro.
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Also, you might want to pick a more likeable person to push your propaganda. Trump doesn't like the foreigners.
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There's a reason you are required to give up your passport (depending on the crime) before trial. They don't want you leaving the country. The same with this. They don't want potential criminals using ill-gotten gains. You will note the person is free. They can continue living their life. It is only the crypto being held until such time it can be ascertained it was not obtained through illeg
Right, the FBI has never screwed up before! (Score:1)
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Given a choice between the dirty FBI and a crypto bro, I'll sadly have to go with the FBI. Crypto by its very nature is a scam. The FBI still have plenty of hard working honest people, just not in the DC office.
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No. Crypto is not inherently a scam. Unfortunately, it's inherently open to scammers, but that's not really the same thing.
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Crypto is only a scam because there are people who get scammed by it. For all we know this guy is one of them.
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why do people take what the FBI says at face value?
Why doesn't someone make their own police force? Wearing brown shirts or red hats, maybe?
Entitled to day in court (Score:4, Insightful)
Being linked to an activity does not prove you had any involvement in the activity. A taxi driver who drops off a burglar at a location that gets robbed is linked to the crime and could help provide evidence, but may otherwise be innocent.
One problem here is the user of Civil Forfeiture law. The Gov't can seize your property on minimal pretext and they don't have to prove you did anything wrong. In the reverse of a criminal proceeding, you have to prove you didn't do a crime.
Good luck to the complainant.
in that case an real taxi may be better then uber (Score:2)
in that case an real taxi may be better then an uber based on what city it happened in.
Is it me... (Score:2)
...or is this like calling the cops when someone steals your Heroin?
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...or is this like calling the cops when someone steals your Heroin?
Depends on whether the money really did come from the scam, or if it didn't and he's right that the FBI made an error.
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Depends on whether the money really did come from the scam, or if it didn't and he's right that the FBI made an error.
HAHAHAHA. Found the rube.
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not knowing your politics, I have no idea if your "HAHAHA" means "here's the rube who's so stupid he thinks that the FBI never makes a mistake" or it's "here's the rube that's so stupid that he doesn't think an Indian guy ran an internet scam."
Or maybe it means "here's a rube that's so stupid he doesn't know that you can make a snap decision of who's guilty based on a news story on the internet, because internet news never gets anything wrong."
Likely another victim (Score:3)
The scamsters use layers and layers - likely, this guy received money for some service he provided, and the recipient of the service paid the scamster... we will not know what the truth is till it is investigated. My 2 cents on this is one should be very very careful when receiving money thorough non-banking channels, and sometimes, even when it is through banking channels and the name of the sender does not match the recipient of the service... It is sad someone lost money to a scam, but there is no knowing if this person who had the funds is himself a victim, or not.
How was it seized? (Score:2)
I'm guessing the moral here is don't hand your crypto over to an exchange under American control while defrauding Americans.
Possibilities (Score:2)
The $18,500 question is "Did Paxful provide the correct information to the FBI?" It's one that will cost a lot more than that in attorney fees to prove or disprove.
My takeaways from this are...
1. Please for the love of god in heaven talk to your family and elderly friends about gift card and bicoin scams. The combination of retirement savings, technical illiteracy, and respect for those claiming to be the law make them extremely vulnerable targets.
2. If your Crypto is not in a wallet in your physical poss
This just in... (Score:1)