Racketeering and money laundering seems to be the Fed's catch-all charges for "Your users may have been committing crimes" - the money laundering might come when you take money from 'criminals', at a guess.

They have charged Kim Dotcom with the same offenses for running megaupload, and I think that they chucked in wire fraud as well.

It's worrying how vague these 'crimes' are, it tips the balance of power too far in the direction of the government agency.

Yeah, there's a reason 98% of cases never go to trial. Adding up all these kinds of charges allows the prosecutor to say "Hey, with these charges you could go to jail for 300 years. Or... you could just plead guilty to what we went after you for."

Doesn't matter if you're innocent or guilty. Game theory (born out by statistics) says you take the plea.

If they made me king tomorrow the first thing I would do is make plea bargains illegal.

Eric Omuro was charged but not convicted on 24 counts of money laundering. He eventually pleaded guilty to a single federal charge of "using a facility of interstate commerce with the intent to facilitate prostitution".

This looks to be a charge under the federal Mann act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act), which criminalizes using a facility of interstate commerce (i.e. the internet) to promote any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense. That offense would be the CA law against prostitution 647(b) (http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/647.html)

The Mann act has an ugly history of being used to convict all sorts of consensual sexual activity. For example, black men with white girlfriends (against state laws criminalizing interracial sex), and even sex outside of marriage (against state laws criminalizing adultery and premarital sex).

If you take money for an illegal service, much less move it or do anything with it (spend it), they're going to get you on money laundering.

It's only laundering if you lie about where the money came from.