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#FinCEN

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If you own or are part of a board of directors of a business of any size in the US, new regulatory filings are coming in to effect. By the end of the year you have to file what's called a "Beneficial Ownership Information Report" or #BOI / #BOIR with the US government agency, #FINCEN.

Filing the report costs nothing if you do it yourself, but there are pretty severe financial penalties for not doing it.

I've been getting notifications about it for about 48 hours that the deadline is fast approaching, and the #phishing #scammers are already jumping on this bandwagon.

This morning I got an email from the website boifilings[dot]co. The website and email claims to come from the "U.S Business Compliance Commission" which is...not a government agency, but a private company.

They do absolutely no validation on any information in the form they link to, other than the credit card number you enter to pay the $250 (!) they're asking you to pay for what is a free service.

Oh yeah, and they list a street address in their contact information, but a Google Street View of that address shows that it's the disused back door of a windowless warehouse or storage shed. You might call it the Four Seasons Total Landscaping of government agencies.

This may not be criminal, but it's still shady AF.

FINCEN has a FAQ about the process here: fincen.gov/boi-faqs

To sum up:

☑️ Named intentionally to sound like a government agency
☑️ Uses a logo on its email and webpage that makes it look like a US government agency
☑️ Wants to charge money for a service that is otherwise free
☑️ Does a terrible job at doing the service they are charging for
☑️ Business address corresponds to an unmarked, windowless storage warehouse back door
☑️ No guarantee that they won't just take the money and run

Just in case you were wondering why yes, there is a #crypto angle to the massive #TDBank money laundering scandal.

Turns out a big chunk of the fines levied by #FinCen for the massive drug money laundering facilitated by TD Bank was because "over $420 million [sent] to a financial institution offering cryptocurrency services in the high-risk jurisdiction of #Colombia."

Curious if anyone has any guesses as to what crypto company that is or was.

edit: my current guess is that the crypto company is #Kado, a Colombian company that trades crypto for cash and prepaid debit cards and uses #FortressTrust (FKA #PrimeTrust, a #Nevada company long rumoured to be connected to the italian mafia), to do (probably fake) KYC/AML.

"Extraordinary. Tether is in talks with commodity trading shops to help finance their trades, claiming they can offer a lower cost of capital and also be useful in trades involving sanctioned entities." - Joe Wiesenthal

Sanctioned entities means companies in countries like #Russia, #Iran, and #NorthKorea. Tether already has been proven to enable sanctions evasion in the first two of those and money laundering by the third.

Remember that if #Trump wins #Tether will get to hand pick who runs FinCen, the OCC, the FBI, the DOJ, and the Defense Dept. of the United States because the guy who manages Tether's money is the chairman of the Trump transition team (#HowardLutnick).

* BBG: bloomberg.com/news/articles/20
* archive: archive.ph/0zLde
* more on Lutnick/Tether/Trump connection: universeodon.com/@cryptadamist

#sanctions#fincen#OCC

"This is the #police chief of a town that straddles a major highway in and out of #Nashville completely lost to #QAnon obsession and #insanity. These guys have been using federal databases to investigate political campaigns and private citizens. The city council completely supports them and is doing nothing to stop them because they are down the insanity rabbit hole. We are in a very very dangerous place because these guys are not alone. Not even remotely." - Fred Wellman

newschannel5.com/news/newschan

Replied in thread

@me_ krrekt! Dazu habe ich schon einigws geschrieben. Vielleicht wird es ja nun in die Debatte eingbracht. Was wohl #Merz, #Linnemann oder #Söder, die das sicher auch schon lange wissen, dazu bemerken werden?!

#Pervitin #crystalmeth

#CRISPR_rEvolution #estutsichwas
#hinterdenKulissen #FinCEN
#DasmussjetztansLicht #undinsParlament! #kamalaharris
#CSU #CDU #Adenauer
troet.cafe/@Lost_Paradise/1101
troet.cafe/@Lost_Paradise/1101
Man könnte Söder ja unter Eid befragen, wenn es zur #Popularklage in Bayern kommt.

Replied in thread

@briankrebs i see Garantex (the favored #Moscow based #crypto exchange for ransomware gangs looking to cash out) and #Bitzlato (obscure exchange used by darknet market Hydra to launder money that was seized by the US govt early 2023) in the #FinCen order: fincen.gov/sites/default/files

(unsurprising but worth noting)

WSJ on #Garantex: wsj.com/finance/currencies/gar