Re: Anguilla story...

[Vincent Cate <vince@offshore.com.ai>]

Tim
>Vince:
> >In a nut shell, taxbomber.com was on my system in Anguilla.  He was
> >selling "camoflauge passports".  One David Evans of Bloomberg Business
> >News wrote an article where he quoted taxbombers page saying something
> >like "it is illegal to use these passports to open up bank accounts, but
> >there is little chance of getting caught". I got a call from my lawyer who
> >had seen the article (along with just about everyone else in Anguilla) and
> >he told me that was illegal in Anguilla and I should cancle the account.
> >I did and taxbomber moved to another provider in another country.
> >
> >1) A number of cypherpunks are dissapointed that I did not fight to my
> >death to defend this guy.
> 
> I think you're overstating the case made by some of us, or, at least, by me.

Your not dissapointed?

> What I said was that your policies need to be spelled out, and that I saw
> little evidence of "fraud" in what the guy was doing.

Ok.  I now have a link from my main page to a page with my policy.

What I said (or meant to) was that MY LAWYER SAID IT WAS ILLEGAL IN 
ANGUILLA.  

In my first post I quoted the wrong part and said "this is fraud by
taxbomber - he did sell fake passports".  I meant to quote a part
where he said something like "I never sold fake passports".

It may be covered in the anti-fraud sections of the laws.

> And that if you cut
> off accounts (without warning, it sounds like)

He got a little warning, then only web access was cut off.  And I forwarded
his email and was the nameserver for his domain name so that he could move
right away to another site.  Then he sent a message to the Internic to
move the management of his domain to another site.  

> based on fairly flimsy (it
> seems to me, and to Duncan, and to others) advice, then certain
> reputational consequences are likely to follow.

Understood.

> By the way, from what you quote this guy as saying ("it is illegal to use
> these passports to open up bank accounts, but there is little chance of
> getting caught"), I _still_ see no fraud.

Not saying that is fraud.  The most I said was encouraging fraud.  It
has been pointed out that under common law using another name is not 
fraud.  However, under certain countries laws using a fake passport
to open a bank account may be defined as fraud.

> >2) If the guy did not mention where his site was, the reporter probably
> >would never have mentioned Anguilla and me in the article.
> 
> Is this the real issue, that what he was doing brought bad publicity to you
> and to Anguilla?

It is both a lesson to be learned, and part of the overall situation.

> These issues need to be aired. Of course you have every right to run things
> as you wish, modulo contractual arrangements you may have entered into with
> your customers and your Internet providers. But we on this list have
> certain ideas about what an "offshore information provider" should provide.

Sure.  And you can run your offshore services as you wish.  I like mine
better.  :-)

> Contrast this case with the well-publicized cases recently where Neo-Nazi
> material is being hosted on U.S. web sites.

If selling fake passports is illegal in Anguilla, and the US has freedom
of speech, they are not comparable. 

  --  Vince
 
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Vincent Cate   vince@offshore.com.ai  http://www.offshore.com.ai/vince/
Offshore Information Services         http://www.offshore.com.ai/