alt Hacker News> it dawned on me that what I was doing was basically indistinguishable from money laundering. Of course it was NOT money laundering
But it is money laundering, that's what manufacturing spend is. It's not money laundering to hide evidence of a crime, but it is money laundering for the purpose of hiding the fact that you didn't engage in commerce in the process of spending money on a credit card to earn a reward. It's indistinguishable, only because we criminalize behavior not only on its base but due to its intent.
Replies
That's not what money laundering means. Where was the illegal activity that led to the money's existance? He just used a rewards loophole, didn't clean anything of actual "dirty" origin.
Not engaging in commerce to earn rewards isn't illegal, it's just an oversight on their part.
We criminalize behavior based on whatever we feel like, based on our cultural expectations of what is allowed. That's what "we criminalize behavior not only on its base but due to its intent" and "considering the context" is all about. That's why we have juries. We reserve the right to break the rules if public opinion allows, based on our feelings. It turns out that justice in practice is not so blind.
For example, we feel like it is fair for credit card companies to monopolize payment systems, charge fees to businesses, and use a portion of the money from this scheme to set up this bullshit reward point system.
But to undermine this system is criminal, because the system is established, but undermining it is novel and therefore disallowed. Any new way to play the game is breaking the rules, because the purpose of the system is what it does.
They call it laundering because it takes "dirty" money and makes it "clean". That's not what happened here. The money was perfectly clean to begin with.
Which law do you think was being broken? I think the person is pretty clearly not defrauding the bank. Maybe the credit card company doesn't like it, but they almost certainly don't have that in writing because if they'd considered this possibility, they wouldn't have allowed it to be possible in the first place.