I would be interested in seeing the government going after him for wasting our tax dollars with his dollar coin churn... 3 million dollars worth of coin purchases, and funneling that through his bank account/credit card account seems very close to money laundering. Moving that much cash around in 8 months...

The problem, of course, is if only 1% of folks who participate in these activities feel a psychological or financial need to brag, that's still too much publicity.

The internet giveth, and taketh away. Human nature is what it is.

The psychological need is fine. That's what DO's are for! And FT. You know, the threads that start out with 'how big is yours (mileage balance)?'

The problem is the financial need. That cannot be satisfied by bragging on FT or at DO, because there will ALWAYS be someone (or 20) who is better at the game or has a bigger one than you do. But bragging to the MSM.... heck, you can tell them that you have 45K in your DL account, and they'll say, 'wow, it takes me 10 years to get that much!'

It does suck to show up late and miss out on the fun. Don't worry, other opportunities will come along.

Was he Mr. Pickles? I seem to remember Mr. Pickles moving some huge amount of coins every week/month.

^

I was not "late" during the mint discussion - I chose to not participate, as it seemed very close to money laundering (SAR) in addition to being a bit unethical and for lack of better words cheating our government out of money. Of course buying 10k coins isnt a big deal and the 3M that idiot put through it.

Before you say, I'm not jealous... Im just cautious that messing with the government on that scale and cycling that much cash borders on a federal crime.

this is disgusting .... Pointing your nose at the CC cards does not gain anything but bad press. The mint deal nobody cares cause its dead but prepaid and amazon their is a concern. Ethics have been tossed out the window, maybe I should join too and line my pockets.

Federal Crime? please.... :rolleyes:

Um... no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_launderingI bought the coins with my own hard earned money that was reported on my 1040... and I deposited the ones I didn't need any more in my bank account located in the United States under my name and social security number. Nothing illegal or illicit about any of this.

I probably spent 1/3 of the coins I received. I was small-time in comparison to many on FT... I probably bought $30-50k.

What is inflation if not the government cheating taxpayers out of their money? Any coinhauler operating legally deserves a Nobel for delivering justice! But that blogger blogging the tradecraft should be stripped of his Nobel and have to earn it like Fearless Leader did.:rolleyes:

What crime is that? :confused: Pointing out how yet another government program was mismanaged? :p There would be few free Americans.

I would not be so dismissive. It was not money laundering (though, the activities may have triggered SARs), but it was fraud. I do not think most are in danger of actually being prosecuted, but if the federal government wanted to, it could definitely build and win a case against those that practiced the coin business on a large enough scale. As in most fraud cases, the critical element is scienter (intent/knowledge) -- here, the oft-repeated cycle of purchasing coins and depositing most if not all of those coins straight into the bank would be more than enough to demonstrate scienter (note: in most jurisdictions, common law and most statutory fraud claims need not show actual knowledge or intent to defraud, but that the speaker/actor acted recklessly). (Remind yourselves of the fraud case that was built against the guys who defrauded Nordstroms/BigCrumbs by buying merchandise, getting the rebates, and returning items to Nordstroms and keeping rebate, though not sure which rebate company exactly.)

In fact, I'm pretty sure that a technical case could be made under the False Claims Act; qui tam lawsuits could be brought. But the bottom line, as I said above, is that no one would care enough (more accurately: hard to pin enough government losses to a single defendant) to bring the case. The DOJ is probably not going to take up a lawsuit for a $10,000 case involving the Mint.

I don't believe the story is real.

"So Wilson pulled out his rewards card and bought nearly $3 million in coins.

Not all at once, of course. But over the course of eight months, he would have thousands of dollars in coins delivered at a time, then walk them into the bank and deposit them into his account. "

$3,000,000 x 8.1g/coin = 24.3 tons
that is 3 tons of coins each month.

If you research it a bit I think that you will find that not only did the U.S. government sell these coins, but when asked about coin churning in the first Wall Street Journal investigation on the subject, the spokesperson for the U.S. Mint said "Is it illegal, no." and then indicated that coin churning was not the intended purpose of the program. Although the Mint later added a pledge statement requiring the user to indicate that he/she understood that the purpose of the program was not to purchase coins for immediate redeposit (with immediate not being defined), if a person added the coin order to his wishlist prior to ordering, the purchase could be made without consenting to this pledge. Also, when a purchaser ordered the coins via phone, he was not asked to affirm that he understood that the purpose of the program was not to buy and redeposit - this subject was never raised on phone orders.

I do not think it is the purpose of the US Justice system to prosecute "frequent buyers" just to make "frequent flyers" less angry about the mileage accumulation techniques of "frequent buyers". That having been said, I too hate the marketers, bloggers, braggers and internet celebrities who quickly destroy these techniques, and the sensationalist media that searches out stories merely to entertain people.