2min chapter

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April 2023

Cato Audio

CHAPTER

The Bank Secrecy Act and Cannabis

Denny Hasterton is in jail for a combination of anti-money laundering and tax evasion. He would get money from DJ gigs he did in Vegas and ask instead of getting $15,000, can I get a check for $9,900 and $5,100? "There's nothing that says you can't bank a criminal," Obama said.

00:00
Speaker 9
So
Speaker 4
let me touch on that with two things. Well, most people who engage in financial services with a lot of money, and even some people in the common world know there's this $10,000 transaction limit that was set in the 1960s, unindexed for inflation, a point I hope we get back to. Part of the law also says, you can't just get around the law by constantly withdrawing $9,999. That's called structuring. That's what Denny Hasterton, that's what the situation did on the Jersey Shore. Also in jail for a combination of anti-money laundering and tax evasion, he would get money from DJ gigs he did in Vegas and ask instead of getting $15,000, can I get a check for $9,900 and $5,100 and trying to avoid paying taxes? Remember, he was the smartest guy in the Jersey Shore, which is why I knew about the $10,000 limit, and he was on the Jersey Shore, which is why I thought he could get away with it with this scheme. So now, look, I'm not saying the situation and Denny Hasterton don't deserve to be in jail. But what I am saying is the crimes for which they're in jail are not a different set of crimes. Second point, let's talk about whether these things make us more or less safe. If I were to have to explain the Bank Secrecy Act, I would start with that banks are required to know their customer, know your customer KYC. Banks can bank criminals. There's nothing that says you can't bank a criminal. In fact, part of the goal of it is to use the data you get from banking criminals to find out the criminals by tracking the money. So part of it, there's a push-pull tension to keep criminals out of the banking system, first keep them in so we can catch them. This gets to the issue of cannabis, which to me is a huge glaring insanity in our current system. Banks can bank cannabis entities. They just have to file an inordinate amount of reports. And if they make any mistake on this report, the bank can be liable. Now, as a result, most banks don't want to touch these companies. Thus, they have to deal in cash. Guess what happens when you have a lot of cash and weed in a location? Crime. People are getting shot. People, they're murders. They're
Speaker 3
all these things because
Speaker 4
we're pushing an entire industry.

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