The Bitcoiner, who said they joined the space in 2011, claimed that they were “one of hundreds of thousands of OTC traders” in 2019 amid a bad actor involved in an illegal lottery scheme using the trading group to launder funds with Bitcoin purchases. Rizzn claimed facilitating fiat-to-crypto exchanges on behalf of the party — who they hinted did not know was being investigated for a crime — resulted in being targeted by U.S.
“I cooperated fully with the 15 armed FBI agents who raided my home in Oct of 2019. I wasn’t able to find a crypto-fluent attorney after I was raided in 2020 [...] I was told that if I plead to the 18 USC 1960 charge, any actions against my family would be dropped.” According to Rizzn, they were “fully registered as a Bitcoin seller with FinCEN” but the Justice Department still targeted them based on their involvement in the illicit transactions. Acting U.S. Attorney Prerak Shahat the time that Hopkins “ignored federal law and allowed fraudsters to use Bitcoin to operate under the radar of law enforcement” and did not take steps to verify the source of the funds involved in the transactions — between $550,000 and $1.5 million at the time.
“I'm not Ross. I wasn't on the dark web. I'm not Edward. I didn't work for the NSA. I'm not Julian. I didn't break national secrets. I'm just a regular Bitcoiner caught in the crosshairs.”between the state and federal levels in the U.S. seemingly in an effort to ensure other crypto users do not face the same enforcement action.
“In much the same way that the feds and states differ on cannabis usage, the Feds and the states are at odds about p2p crypto usage,” said Rizzn."Delaware, Texas and Wyoming are actively promoting p2p crypto usage in such a way that they’re manufacturing hundreds of thousands of felons every day. There needs to be a) clarity on how to be as compliant as possible and b) ideally a rollback of the overreaching guidance in the first place.