General rules:
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
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.
Your broader point is correct though of course, no argument there.
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..
I mean, depending on the drugs, this is not necessarily the worst idea. Sending acid tabs seems pretty concealable, and the spores of psychedelic mushrooms are not illegal to purchase. You could probably even send pills, if you put them in a hard candy/breath mint container as part of a larger and innocuous care package.
Like, it’s definitely better not to risk it, but this could be done in a discreet manner. I’m guessing he got poorly sealed and smelly weed though.
Lol it was cocaine and he got a visit from the fbi from what I heard but not much more than that. Rich kid of course.
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.
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" :(
Don't try such kind 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
both my wife and I have to stop ourselves from making those jokes. she swears she doesn't have a dark sense of humor, but she works at a school. she's had so many damn drills and we've had to seriously comprehend so many different horrific scenarios~1~ she sometime tells school shooting jokes to lighten the mood.
1 that is supposed to be higher or lower dammit fuck you formatting short version of the training we've both had that is accessible to almost everyone
If you're wondering what's the least you can do to get prepared, CPR and Stop the Bleed training are first aid training that are accessible, beginner level training that people of nearly every ability level can do. I am nearly bedridden and I get CPR and Stop the Bleed certified every other year (I tag along with my wife's CPE. The district has gotten used to me showing up, I pay for my own cert, and we went to high school with the EMTs who teach the class (technically I taught one of them his first first aid class in boy scouts but meh. he's passed his boards fair and square it's just funny how small a world it is sometimes because we just keep reviewing the same shit every two years like we're going to a bad church)
edit: mild formatting, sent for coffee
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.
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.
"Sam of Team Starling" sounds less like someone who works for a bank and more like a DC Comics sidekick 😄
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.
I have never thought about this as a vehicle for an dissent
I know Paypal once blocked some stuff because some abbreviation or meme got flagged due to a sanctioned company having the same initials, but I can't remember ehat exactly it was… went through some news.
For real though, the only way to deal with pervasive surveillance is to give them too much noise to surveil.
So do people who get training from the taliban, mark there payments 'taliban training'?
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.
They absolutely fuckin' do. It is stunning how stupid some people are, especially when committing a crime, especially online.
I am glad someone reads 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.
I used to put thing like crack, heroin, coke & hoes; I wish I got an email like that from the bank.
Does not sound like they appreciate it
