4 ms·
"A high % of your money" is not "all your money". Let's say I've bought these bogus cards. This is the starting point, with dirty money. Anything bought here i
by moate 7y ago
"A high % of your money" is not "all your money".
Let's say I've bought these bogus cards. This is the starting point, with dirty money. Anything bought here is obvious and traceable. I take that money, and I buy Visa gift cards, which basically function as cash. I take those Visas and buy Amex gift cards, losing 6% (ballparking here, it's actually 5.95% for $100) of my take to fees and then another 10% to fees/shipping for Amex. I funnel those through fake app purchases on the app store and lose a further 20% of my original take.
I now have about 55-65% of my original take in relatively clean money that I convert to bitcoin and back. If you're talking thousands of dollars here, this can easily be worth it. Doubly so if you live in a country where the expectations of police are that they're not going to have the resources to pursue this kind of crime for whatever reason. Get enough people doing this and enough accounts to make the flow through multiple channels, and you've got yourself the makings of a multi-million dollar money laundering service you can sell out to identity thieves (or use for your own thieves).
- mrep 7y ago> I now have about 55-65% of my original take in relatively clean money that I convert to bitcoin and back. I'm no tax investigator expert, but I cannot think of a more sketchy/illegal way to "make a lot of money" than by receiving a bunch of bitcoin especially considering every bitcoin transaction is recorded on a public leger. They have every accounts history you received money from. How are you going to explain receiving all those transactions? At least with your app, you have something to show what people paid for even if it is shit.
- moate 7y agoI mean the whole plan was to steal credit cards and then launder the money through several intermediaries. It's like the textbook definition of "sketchy/illegal". THAT SAID, there's nothing illegal about using money from your app store company to purchase bitcoin. IDK that it even feels that weird these days with crypto being proto-mainstream at this point. Easily hand waved away as "Oh, he's one of those weird tech guys". Most criminal activity is risky. The bet you're making is "this is unlikely to be investigated thoroughly enough for me to be caught". Considering how the government keeps gutting the IRS, and how difficult investigating cybercrimes is for most police departments, this isn't even implausible in the US.