Comment by frank_jaeger

The entire point of money laundering is to convert ill-gotten money into seemingly legitimate assets. It's not like they offered Espinoza dirty cash that he would buy for cents on the dollar with clean cash. He didn't channel their cash through legitimate business channels to obfuscate its history. He engaged in nothing resembling money laundering. This was a man who sold a commodity. Replace Bitcoin with literally anything else. If Espinoza sold them $30,000 of frozen orange juice concentrate, who cares if they're going to trade that for stolen Russian credit cards? In no way is he facilitating money laundering in either scenario.