[Taler] The illicit use case (A)

[fabian . kirsch]

Everybody knows the goals of Eve, Alice, Bob and Doublespender.
We should clarify the goals of
Buyer of illicit Service, Seller of illicid Service, Taxevader, 
Moneylaunderer and Hidden-hawala-settler.
in terms of the taler service

Attention:
I received degrees only in Math and Computer Science.
My knowledge about "money laundering suppression"
(original: Geldwäschebekämpfung)
stems only from a 14day project some years ago.

The illicit use-case (A):
customer is meant with respect to taler.
The customer has a blinded public key.
He does NOT know the blinding factor.
He does NOT know the public key itself.
He does NOT know the corresponding private key.
He wants to turn the corresponding key-pair into a Coin with value.
(which may be accomplished by getting it signed by the mint)
He is willing to spend money, Coins and time on that goal.
He is willing to take some risk of losing money,Coins,time.
He does not want his legal identity to be linked
in any way to that new coin. He is not going to
take significant risk about this.
(this can always be accomplished by additional blinding).

What motivates that use-case:
the taler-customer is at the same time the customer in an illicit 
transfer.
He gets the blinded public key from the illicit partner. The return 
comes
as soon as the blinded public key is signed.


Background about collusion:
The parties are used to have a long sequence or large numbers of 
transactions.
As long as these transactions are not linked to each other, they have no
problem to trust for a short amount of time.
So the damage to the cheated crook would be limited, while the cheating 
crook
looses a business contact.

So the "sharing" of taler is preventive.
Not because they don't trust each other for the moment.
But because the transactions can not be closed/settled/finalized.

Background about taxation of washed money:
The accepted efficiency factor in money laundering is surprisingly low.
This is because there is enormous gains on both sides of the chain:
in dirty money and in cleaned money.
Cleaned money is multiplied by giving competitive advantage to
associated enterprises.

So $1000 cleaned don't add directly to the yacht.
If someone from "family" has some taxis running, he would
fake trips for $50 per car and day. Paying all fees and tax.
The taxi enterprise can grow without suspicion, it can slightly
undercut the fares of the competition and gain market share.
Later the "successful" business man legally buys the yacht he deserves.

Similar schemes are possible for hotels, motels, restaurants, 
scooter-renting,
cinemas, ...
Wherever a regular business has high fixed cost and low variable cost
cleaned money "optimizes" utilization. In order to keep your books
in plausible balance you have to buy enough consumables. And existing 
customers
love it to get their share of the fictional customers' 
drinks/side-dishes/miles/popcorn/fuel/..
as they account it to the owners generosity.

As far as i remember correctly:
France already has a "you have be able to explain your wealth" law.
So money goes longer paths in order to arrive within plausible 
circumstances.