My interest in this story from a privacy perspective is not the data leak itself. Its this excerpt from the article.
The site allegedly used a plugin called CardsShield to route payments through dozens of fake e-commerce storefronts to disguise the true nature of transactions from PayPal and Stripe. The proceeds then went through a circuit involving USDT, Monero and Ethereum, with funds passed through Tornado Cash to reach anonymous wallets.
I realize this was all an attempt to launder money but I am wondering if these methods could be co-opted in a legal way to help people more privatley move funds around.
I had never heard of Cards Shield before. I wonder if any users here have experience with it.
Mods - Even though the story has some privacy related elements such as it being a data leak, I apologize if this should be in the off-topic section of the forum. I was not sure where to place it.
I am not a lawyer. This is nothing more than a fun hypothetical thought experiment
Concealing a source of income isnt itself a crime. To meet the criminal definition of Money Laundering, that source must be illegal activities
You could, in theory, pass funds through lawful shell corps, eCommerce storefronts, and cash businesses, to legally transfer legitimate income from A to B, without allowing B to know that funds came from A.
In practice, this would immediately trigger AML legal processes. A system to effectively allow financial privacy/anonymity could/would be used for money laundering, and would face federal investigation for financial crimes. In order to demonstrate no laws have been broken, you’d have to forfeit whatever privacy you hoped to gain
Maybe it’s possible in crypto, using different coins in lieu of shell corps and store fronts. That stuff is unregulated. I dont understand crypto
Based on the article it seems like you could run, at the very least, thousands of dollars through that method at a time without triggering anything. Granted, maybe its just whatever jurisdiction the YGG operators were in that prevented this.
Right, and thats if your focused on using fiat. Which is probably why the operators mixed in “Monero and Ethereum, with funds passed through Tornado Cash”