Berzerk writes:

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ABSOLUTELY! The fact is if you can't get someone to snitch, IT IS NOT A CRIME (morally)! I dare anyone to come up with a counterexample. If you were limiting your assertion to crime over the net, I suggest that the long, interesting history of confidence men is a refutation. Done correctly, in many cases the victim doesn't even know he has been conned. Then have they? Can you give an example?

I recently moved to Portland, OR (any cypherpunks up here?), and haven't yet unpacked all my books, but from memory one variation used in the movie "Grifters" is: - Convince the mark that you have an undetectable method to make money from the stock market that, while technically illegal, "won't hurt anyone". - Get seed money from the mark to run the scam. - Stage a bust by the police and allow the mark to escape. - The mark feels lucky to have gotten away, the front man and faux police split the money. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with ways of doing this on the net, given ecash and the rest of the infrastructure. Regards, Patrick May pjm@gasco.com