I was told by a friend that my local news reported that there was a bust in the darknet market world by bank tellers becoming suspicious of people depositing large amounts of money into people's account to acquire bitcoins.
I can't find anything on my local news' website, but I was wondering if this was possible and if any other people had heard of this.
Supposedly people were depositing large amounts of cash into other people's accounts and they became suspicious.
I thought purchasing bitcoins was not illegal, and that could not be enough for them to investigate. Please tell me this is not the end of this road. If so, i'm off to move to California or Colorado. Damn! Talk about a bust to my bubble!
It isn't illegal. Also, how do the bank tellers know the purpose of the deposit? Of all the things it could be, it may be a stretch to automatically assume they are buying bitcoin. There are also other more sinister things it could be. In other words, even if there are suspicious bank deposits, there isn't a direct link to BTC that the bank can see or follow. I guess unless a depositor told them it was for coin or if the account holder listed this as primary purpose of a bank account.
Suspicious deposits are just that - suspicious. Honestly large cash deposits raise other illegal questions. Money laundering, penny stock scams, scamming, and the like come to mind. Unfortunately cash deposits is an odd way to pay for a service or good. Large cash deposits are a concern always. It doesn't even have to be DNM related. From a consumer perspective buying BTC is this manner is okay unless you are talking large amounts. It's really the vendor/account holder that has some risk and they have to see how to juggle the reasons they are getting large cash deposits.
Banks have an obligation, a legal one, to know their customer. Seeing patterns of cash deposits needs to be explained or the account is at risk of being closed and maybe reported. Bitcoin isn't illegal but many banks shy away from it. So many BTC vendors I suspect are not telling their banks what they are doing