Their legal counsel had advised them that they were not a money transfer business and not required to do so.
They had also been in business successfully for years before the patriot act passed.
I also hardly think you could say that they directly ignored it as they had actually been disputing that they were under Fincen regulations for several years and not just sitting back hoping for the best.
Whether you agree with their analysis is up to you. I think it was probably not a battle worth fighting.
Their service was undoubtably used for money laundering, but mainly for smaller criminals and fraudsters. The same could be said for craigslist, paypal, ebay and even google.
Over the years money laundering has become code for tax avoidance, online gaming and dubious investment schemes. By using that term the DOJ make it sound like it was used by major criminal organizations. It wasn't.
Real large scale money laundering is done most often through real estate, fake invoices between cover businesses and use existing banks complete with know your customer compliance.
