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Re:The Rise and Fall of RedBook by EdwardDiego on Friday March 06, 2015 @12:54AM (#9155788)
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.

Re:The Rise and Fall of RedBook by tsotha on Friday March 06, 2015 @05:34AM (#9156442)
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.