huffingtonpost.com — Information on 15,000 HSBC customers with Swiss accounts has been stolen, the British bank said Thursday, potentially exposing foreign clients to prosecution by tax authorities in their home countries.
Mar 11, 2010 View in Crawl 4
zionoeMar 11, 2010
How to believe the safe way to save money?
wonderchemistMar 12, 2010
This is why I only trust Nigerian bankers.
shinkouMar 12, 2010
There is no such thing as a safe place.
sulthernaoMar 12, 2010
There is such a thing as an honest bank (outside of the local community banks and credit unions)? I find that hard to believe.
mothboyMar 12, 2010
Why in the world would you qualify with "outside of the local community banks"? Some of our biggest scandals in San Diego have involved the "banks" owned by the local crooks (otherwise known as "civic leaders" and the occasional "man of the year") that used them as their personal slush funds.As for credit unions, more than a few of them got caught up in the S&L scandal and failed, so they may be better but are in no way immune to corruption.
pradaaddictMar 12, 2010
>Plus, I think the taxman can't use stolen information to get to you.Sure they can. They can either play nice with the hackers and buy the information or if the hacker or the data reside in the US they can subpoena the data. When UBS was hacked the German gov't bought the information regarding German citizens, as did the US gov't. In addition the OECD has stated that they will no object to Gov'ts using stolen bank data against tax evaders.
areyouserialMar 12, 2010
All this is doing is promoting massive corruption via the "second passport" market and disrespect for the law as lawyers call their clients and help them store their money in ways that obscure their identities to effectively avoid fishing expeditions. Cheering for countries that try to use stolen data for prosecutions only creates demand for anonymous banking in countries where less and less identity laws exist, in order to counter this criminal behavior by governments. You can laugh at the amateurs who got caught this time, but you'll only laugh once.It's easy to sneer at these people, but it's the same system of law that protects your rights. If you don't like the laws, you're obligated to change them.
michichaelMar 12, 2010
They're called grey-hat hackers.