Aberlour10, on Jan 31 2010, 04:54 PM, said:
kenberg, on Jan 31 2010, 04:17 PM, said:
Aberlour10, on Jan 31 2010, 08:26 AM, said:
Hypothetical case:
Somebody has a CD with swiss bank account-data of 1500 US-citiziens and want to sell it for 1 mill bucks US authorities (IRS?)
The question is: Is US treasury authorities allowed to buy such stolen material and use it legal to investigate trespasses.???
There is a real, similar case in Germany at the moment.
I think that generally if police purchase information then that may make the information suspect but if it turns out to hold up then I don't think the fact that it was purchased makes it unusable in court. But then usually purchased information is on a small scale, like from a stoolie. I guess the cited case is really large scale stool pigeoning and maybe scale matters. Or not. If the guy trying to sell this info is still alive, I'm impressed.
In the real case in Germany, somebody offers 1500 files with accounts data from the swiss UBS bank....all germans customers....the price for the deal = 2,5 mill
The finance authorities checked for example 5 of these files...they mean each of these 5 germans should pay about 1 million on taxes etc...
The experts mean the whole deal will bring german state about 100-200 mill ....if the minister of finance decide to buy it.
Two years ago they bought stolen data in Lichtenstein...it brought more then 100 mill on taxes till now.
post scriptum, 3 months later...
1 CD has been really bought by german goverment,
and this small piece of plastic sparked off till now:
-more then 1000 preliminary inquries
-12000-13000 self-indictments
-800 - 1000 mill on taxes