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Before we had EU-wide free instant money transfers that only worked within some banks. Two guys, who were at one such bank, decided to use it as an instant messenger. So they sent hundreds of messages while transferring just one Cent back and forth.
Until they got a message from a bank teller that they were equally amused by their jokes but should tone down the frequency because every money transfer cost the bank 11 Cents (don't remember the real number, but it was ridiculously high).
Assuming they sent 1000 texts a day that would cost the bank a whopping $100. I think they'll be fine.
Once I sent a payment to a friend with a note like "drugs and guns" as a joke and it was delayed for like, two days.
Who tf is out there with zero opsec just using the banking system and straight up putting illegal stuff in the note field? So stupid.
Mate you'd be surprised.
I knew a guy in the Police who said that Facebook was a gift because people are dumb.
One guy posted publicly a photo with a couple kg of weed and flashing a pistol acting like a badman. The local police account commented under the post saying they'd like a word, guy responded "what you gonna do, arrest me?", I think you can work out what happened next.
One thing I've learned from parenting a teen is that if you suspect your child is doing something really stupid, there is a very good chance that there is photo or video evidence of it.
Lot of kids out there under age drinking and taking videos of their shenanigans. Dumbasses.
Their brains aren't fully developed. What do you expect?
Now, adults on the other hand...
I'm convinced that some people's brains never fully develop.
I can't remember if it's pseudoscience or actually validated (we'll assume pseudo), but I've come across it many times: there's a running commentary in psychological development that only 33% of humans ever reach mental maturity, true adulthood. The vast majority land at adolescence ans stay there, with some never getting much past 12. To me, this has been the single greatest explanation of why ppl behave the way they do, somewhat comforting at least
Epstein used fucking Gmail.
Think of the average dumbest use case and realize there's someone dumber still.
I think that's a little different though, Epstein had blackmail material on basically everyone in power, he was basically legally untouchable, he had mutually assured pedophillic destruction. That's why they had to assassinate him
When you're in the untouchables it doesn't matter.
I mean, there's a buffet of conspiracies around what happened to Epstein, but most would agree he was in jail for his crimes.
Oh yeah, that famous Florida plea bargain. How many years did it take and what surrounding circumstances finally affected his arrest? 🤓
Matt Gaetz literally used his public venmo to pay underage prostitutes.
People are fucking stupid.
People who use public Venmo are stupid, prostitution aside. What an artifact of the “anything and everything should be social media somehow” era
Oi! Some of us like to keep track of our expenses, it's a good budgeting practice.
Just do it like the US govt and use code words; $435 for a hammer, $600 for a toilet seat, and $7000 for a coffee maker (1980's dollars adjusted for inflation $1315, $1814, and $21159 respectively). How else would we keep secret projects "off" the books?
Suddenly you've put this news in a whole other perspective for me:
The Trump Administration
I knew a kid in college who got drugs delivered straight to the dorm mailroom, so people can really be surprisingly brazen..
Big banks probably have a more automated system but in small banks, there's a good chance someone at the OPS center is literally scrolling through all the online transfers on a given day. Mostly to screen for potential fraud but I'm sure stuff like this raises a few eyebrows.
Switch to tagging transactions as 'real estate fraud', 'financial instrument fraud', 'fake university', 'epstein party fund'
We don't prosecute these things.
Don't try such kinds of jokes with security in the airport or with the police.
My dad once joked about having a bomb while going through airport security.
It was 1997, though.
I still nearly came unglued at him.
Security just rolled their eyes. And I'm pretty sure it was just basically like the call of the void. It was obviously a joke too
Fun fact: back in the early 2010's Verizon Wireless started a new mobile payment option where you had the option to get an accompanying debit card for your account with the name of the app on it.
The mobile payment system name was ISIS.
Isis was a major Egyptian goddess. It shouldn't be super surprising that things had that name before the Islamic State co-opted it.
Bob Dylan has a (great) song called "Isis"
one of my friends had a dog named Isis around that time. also the fictional spy agency from the tv show Archer was called ISIS, which was written out of the show at the start of the fifth season, earlier ones have them running around saying "we're ISIS agents" all the time. it was a totally normal thing until it suddenly wasn't
When I was younger I always called my multiplayer guilds and factions Eye of Isis / Isis Eye. I am afraid doing that now would me considered "political" :(
Back in the day, Avid (the company that makes professional software like media composer and pro tools) sold a NAS system called ISIS (Infinitely Scalable Intelligent Storage). The studio I worked at had a different system, but the head of post production still called it “the ISIS” because he got used to calling the network storage that.
Was the system good or had it other false promises? Infinitely sounds very unprofessional for me.
What happens when we used all the resources on our planet to scale the NAS? Did they have the technology back than, to harvest other planets or even other star systems? So many questions…
😉
Have my friends make the note on all cashapp transactions to me say "Support for ICE" so the powers that be double what I receive. 😌
If you keep sending them the bank may give you the boot. They tend to fire customers who trigger too many investigations of this type.
Along with seizing all your funds until they've "investigated." Its not like this is on the banks, the government forces them to do this in the name of "stopping terrorism."
Your bank invests your money in selling arms to other countries all the time. They're already complicit in all manner of things. They just don't want it spelt out.
I wonder what other topics could stir up a upwards message.
I would say ‘political bribe’ or ‘lobbying fund’ but I’m sure that should be hand waved through.
Eat the rich…..oops sorry I was send money for dinner, nah not sorry.
"Sam of Team Starling" sounds less like someone who works for a bank and more like a DC Comics sidekick 😄
Yeah. I'm sure that's what actual bad guys do. They label their crimes and plots clearly with bank transactions.
What a bunch of fucking idiots.
But imagine the outrage if a terrorist group actually marked their payments like this – maybe the day before their suicide attack – with the thought that what does it matter anyway they won't be here to be investigated.
And the bank didn't investigate. The bank would be fined to hell and back and lose all trust, because they couldn't do "the bare minimum" in finding something this obvious.
Have you read the emails in the Epstein files? The ones where they're openly talking, in plain text, over Gmail, about trafficking girls and women?
Yes, actual bad guys do incredibly stupid things when they think the law can't touch them.
They absolutely fuckin' do. It is stunning how stupid some people are, especially when committing a crime, especially online.
Worked in retail banking for 7 years. Can tell you that the tellers are required to submit illegal activities to the investigation department. Not only this but things like elder abuse, child abuse, identify thief (happens too often with parents and their unwilling kids).
Ya, don't mess with banks. Because you might mess yourself up or someone you care about.
Bonus Story: I had someone come into the branch wanting me to try and change a line item that said something like blowjobs from a coworker that was paying him back for lunch. Dude was getting a divorce and that shit caused a ton of headache for him.
When I was applying for a house mortgage, the case officer was asking me questions about the ins and outs of my financial transactions relating to my investments, because I made multiple deposits in a short period of time. I felt like I was being interrogated and I was annoyed on why the need for that level of scrutiny. Then I remembered that criminals have used buying properties for money laundering, or their initial capital came from criminal activities. There is a posh neighbourhood near where I live, and I saw couple of rough looking families having a gathering in a restaurant. I'm pretty sure they live in that area as well, and if they are, there is a likelihood that they may have bought or are renting properties using dark money (not that rich, suit-wearing people don't do this either).
So do people who get training from the taliban, mark there payments 'taliban training'?
I am glad someone readst those. When I was 15 and got my bank account, while making cash deposits I used to put "I use Arch-based distro, btw" into the "note" field.
It was Manjaro with Plasma. Now I use vanilla Arch.
For real though, the only way to deal with pervasive surveillance is to give them too much noise to surveil.
Does not sound like they appreciate it
