Florida Targets High-Dollar Bitcoin Exchangers
Summary: Florida authorities on Thursday charged three men, including 30-year-old Michell Abner Espinoza of Miami Beach and 29-year-old Canadian citizen Pascal Reid, with running unlicensed money transmitting and money laundering businesses moving large amounts of cash in and out of Bitcoin. Undercover officers from the U.S. Secret Service's Miami Electronic Crimes Task Force arranged face-to-face trades through localbitcoins.com, including a $30,000 cash-to-Bitcoin deal, and investigators said Reid had 403 Bitcoins in his on-phone wallet alone, then worth roughly $316,000.
What's compelling: Researcher Nicholas Weaver said he is unaware of another case using state law against a Bitcoin vendor, and he expects more state cases because localbitcoins.com is among the last places Americans can buy Bitcoins anonymously - the mechanism he calls the lifeblood of dark markets like Silk Road.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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