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you could use an art gallery, you have normal customers walk into the shop and also have "mysterious" purchases of the more expensive items. you could also deli

you could use an art gallery, you have normal customers walk into the shop and also have "mysterious" purchases of the more expensive items. you could also deliver it somewhere to store or destroy. then you buy more art from an unknown artist and put up in the shop at high prices. if the artwork becomes in demand you can then sell those items again legitimately (if you kept them in storage).

cperciva 10y ago
People don't usually pay for expensive works of art with bundles of $100 bills. In fact, this applies to pretty much all high-value transactions -- the probability of a purchase being made in cash decreases as the value increases. Restaurants work well for money laundering because they handle a large number of small transactions -- thus they can plausibly have a high percentage of cash transactions.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  There's a balancing act between cash and credit cards that you have to watch out for. Once a table exceeds $80, the odds of payment with a card rise to 90%. If you run a nice fancy restaurant where hardly anybody gets away without paying $100 a head, your cash deposits ought to look like 15% of your totals, max. At the low end, a coffee shop, or dive bar can reasonably establish 60-75% of their sales in cash, but unless you've got huge turnover, the overall amounts aren't great. That's why strip clubs, where legal, are always watched for laundering. A remarkable percentage of their clientele want to use cash, and can drop it in high-end restaurant quantities.
- lj3 10y ago
  It used to work for laundromats too, until the feds started measuring water usage. In fact, I think it would be trivial to set up on a restaurant and be able to do fairly close calculations about how many tables a restaurant does per night vs how many table cloths get cleaned, how much water gets used for washing dishes, electricity, etc. It makes me wonder if this method actually gets used anymore.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Possibly easier to monitor electricity use? Might have a closer relationship to production output of a restaurant too??
rdtsc 10y ago
Not a bad idea, but in the art world everyone knows everyone. It would become pretty noticeable after a while if a gallery is just a front. Also has to be in the right part of town. If it is a Midwest Rustbelt suburb with Applebees and Burger Kings around and then an art gallery pops up selling post-modern art making millions a year in cash, it would stick out pretty well.

cperciva 10y ago

People don't usually pay for expensive works of art with bundles of $100 bills. In fact, this applies to pretty much all high-value transactions -- the probability of a purchase being made in cash decreases as the value increases. Restaurants work well for money laundering because they handle a large number of small transactions -- thus they can plausibly have a high percentage of cash transactions.

dsr_ 10y ago
There's a balancing act between cash and credit cards that you have to watch out for. Once a table exceeds $80, the odds of payment with a card rise to 90%. If you run a nice fancy restaurant where hardly anybody gets away without paying $100 a head, your cash deposits ought to look like 15% of your totals, max. At the low end, a coffee shop, or dive bar can reasonably establish 60-75% of their sales in cash, but unless you've got huge turnover, the overall amounts aren't great. That's why strip clubs, where legal, are always watched for laundering. A remarkable percentage of their clientele want to use cash, and can drop it in high-end restaurant quantities.
lj3 10y ago
It used to work for laundromats too, until the feds started measuring water usage. In fact, I think it would be trivial to set up on a restaurant and be able to do fairly close calculations about how many tables a restaurant does per night vs how many table cloths get cleaned, how much water gets used for washing dishes, electricity, etc. It makes me wonder if this method actually gets used anymore.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Possibly easier to monitor electricity use? Might have a closer relationship to production output of a restaurant too??

rdtsc 10y ago

Not a bad idea, but in the art world everyone knows everyone. It would become pretty noticeable after a while if a gallery is just a front. Also has to be in the right part of town. If it is a Midwest Rustbelt suburb with Applebees and Burger Kings around and then an art gallery pops up selling post-modern art making millions a year in cash, it would stick out pretty well.