About Audiophoolery At It's Finest !

*Only* $10k for a unidirectional ethernet cable?!! Oh mama, I've got to get me one of these. I thought these people had hit the light barrier with the $4850 HDMI cable that was offered at Amazon not long ago. Obviously I was wrong.

On a sunny day (Thu, 12 Feb 2015 16:47:52 +0530) it happened "Pimpom" wrote in :

Did see a documentary recently about a money laundering scheme involving the drug cartels in LA, where they sell fashion underwear for millions. Walk in with a million in cash, money goes to bank in Mexico, company to company, no questions asked.

So walk in with your millions of drugs money, buy some of these cables, and be done with it.

I think they mentioned people need to report anything above 20,000 USD now? Not sure about the exact amount / limit, but that can simply be fixed. Just make the cables 1 $ cheaper, and 'buy' one at the time. Yea, with much of US on drugs these things make sense,. I do not think people with that much to spare are dumb enough to fall for it, probably hire people who know about that stuff, or have hands on experience.

So that is for the FBI to look into.

Better to use a drone to send the money :-) Autopilot, multiple waypoints, diamonds. Stealth.

the IRS has been known to seize assets based on violation of structuring laws even when there was NO underlying illeagal activity...

i.e. when Joes pizza shop just accidently made a series of $9,900 deposits.

Then there is a long term expensive process required to prove innocence.

I'm not making this up. I wish I were.

Mark

According to the IRS page on the matter:

"A business must file Form 8300 to report cash paid to it if the cash payment is:

Over $10,000,

Received as:

One lump sum of over $10,000,

Two or more related payments that total in excess of $10,000, or

Payments received as part of a single transaction (or two or more related transactions) that cause the total cash received within a 12-month period to total more than $10,000.

Received in the course of trade or business,

Received from the same payer (or agent), and

Received in a single transaction or in two or more related transactions."

There are similar requirements for cash deposits and (I think) withdrawals from banks, etc.

Deliberately "structuring" financial transactions in a way which is intended to evade the $10,000 reporting requirements, is a violation of the law.

So, selling multiple $9999 "audio interconnect cables" to the same buyer (or to individuals in a group of people reasonably seen as being part of the same venture) would be a violation.

I saw mention recently that a Federal court has slapped some division of the US Federal Government (IRS? DEA?), for seizing money from businesses which hadn't technically complied with the reporting requirement, holding it for years, and never actually filing any charges. The money (in these cases) did not appear to have derived from any illegal activities... the transactions just hadn't been reported properly.

In the data diode market $10k unit price would be the normal price, unfortunately that ethernet cable isn't unidirectional :-)