Crypto currencies, gambling, copyrights

Question

I am a programmer and i have been offered the possibility to work for someone on the other side of the world to write a crypto program that would allow users to gamble their crypto currencies. The person is offering either an instant payment for the work or to make me a recipient of a % of the fees the different games will collect. There will also be a token issued for the application and i would responsible for creating and deploying it.

I have the strong feeling this person is doing this without the appropriate legal structure. So i wonder if i should accept this job offer, and if taking the fee option, which would probably be the best financially speaking could put me at a risk of being considered the creator and manager of the project or not vs just working for a fixed payment. Where i live gambling applications are heavily regulated but this person is on another continent, i don't want to be seen as the manager of this project in any way, just as a programmer selling his code for a fee.

What should i do, knowing that work has been scarce and this could really be a help for me.

Also is there a way to make myself safe like signing an agreement, or writing a limitation of liability in case of bugs etc..

Any legal advice is very much appreciated, i'm from the EU zone.

Answer 1

If you reasonably suspect that the person will do something illegal with your work, you’re an accessory

For an analogous situation, if you suspect (actual standards of knowledge vary) that the person is going to rob a bank (perhaps because they told you, perhaps because they have a backpack of balaclavas, sawn-off shotguns and the book “Robbing Banks for Dummies”), and they ask to borrow your car, giving it to them will make you an accessory if they do, in fact, use your car to rob a bank.

Programmers have been charged for their participation in online crimes.

As for whether you can write a contract to protect you: no. For obvious reasons, contracts are not allowed to protect you from criminal liability. For civil liability, well, any third-party who wants to sue you is not bound by a contract they didn’t enter.