RE: Fossil Hunters indicted (fwd)

[Steve Jackson <sj@io.com>]

On Fri, 3 Feb 1995, it was written:

> I assume wire fraud is analogous to mail fraud. No idea of
> what "structuring" is, and in fact it reminds me of the political
> speech in which a candidate accused his opponent's wife of being
> a "known thespian" who had "matriculated" at college.

Wire fraud is a popular catch-all offense among prosecutors who want to 
pile up the indictments. If you have a telephone, and if you have an 
enemy at the courthouse, you might find yourself indicted for wire fraud.

"Structuring" is the "offense" of arranging your financial transactions 
in order to avoid reporting requirements. For instance (made up numbers 
here because I'm not sure of the right ones) - If the bank is required to 
report any cash deposit of $10,000 or more, and you make two cash 
deposits of less than $10,000 each on successive days, you can be accused 
of structuring. This is one of those laws that can be justified on its 
face (if the original reporting requirement is a good law, you don't want
the bad guys to waltz around it by dividing up their transactions). But 
in practice, it's incredibly abusable. Perfectly reasonable, innocent 
business behavior can be painted as illegal.

Wonder what on earth they meant by "money laundering" ???  

IMHO, seeing these indictments is a big red flag . . . somebody is doing 
everything they can to destroy BHI.



** Steve Jackson - yes, of SJ Games - yes, we won the USSS case - fnord **
   yes, INWO is out - http://io.com/sjgames/ - dinosaurs, Lego, Kahlua!