Florida representative and MAGA firebrand Matt Gaetz found himself in the middle of a reputational, and possibly criminal, firestorm this week after the New York Times broke the news on Tuesday that the Justice Department is looking into whether he broke federal sex trafficking laws and had sexual encounters with a minor. The Times’ sources say that investigators are examining Gaetz’s relationship two years ago with someone who may have been 17 at the time. They are also determining whether he financially supported her, including paying for her to travel with him over state lines, in exchange for sex, which could amount to sex trafficking of a minor. Subsequent news reports have unearthed increasingly bizarre details about the scandal; Times reporters, for instance, reviewed records of suspicious transactions that Gaetz made through payment apps. The Gaetz probe is reportedly part of a larger investigation into one of his political allies, former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector Joel Greenberg. Reporters also retrieved receipts of payments that Gaetz and Greenberg made via Cash App and Apple Cash to one of the women involved. This particular detail raised eyebrows on social media, mostly because it seems foolhardy for a high-profile politician to commit a crime using something as traceable as these two extremely popular payment apps.
For certain people engaging in criminal activities, payment apps can be useful for covering their tracks. Fraudsters trying to cheat people out of their COVID-19 relief funds have recently taken to using these apps to quickly move money between multiple accounts in order to confuse law enforcement. If you don’t do enough to obscure the sender and recipient of the illicit payments, though, the records that these apps keep can serve as indelible evidence. (There’s no way, for instance, to delete transaction histories on Cash App.) Of course, some cases involving evidence found on payment apps don’t have anything to do with solicitation or sex trafficking. Investigators with the Montgomery County, Ohio, sheriff’s office found in 2019 that a corrections officer was selling inmates cigarettes for $100 a pack using Cash App on his phone. Inmates at a jail in Stafford County, Virginia, were also arrested in July 2020 for getting people on the outside to smuggle in drugs and paying them with Cash App. You’d think lawbreakers would’ve caught on by now: Don’t use apps—just cash.
slate.com
