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I hear this a lot and on the face of it, it sounds plausible but I have worked with a number of startups from before their founders incorporated and I don't thi

I hear this a lot and on the face of it, it sounds plausible but I have worked with a number of startups from before their founders incorporated and I don't think, "setting up dummy companies in 30 min" is a thing. You need directors and shareholders for all these companies (and nominee directors aren't really a thing anymore because of the obvious risks), you need to provide a lot of UBO paperwork (ultimate beneficial owner) and even more if you ever want to open a bank account (dummy companies without bank accounts are useless after all). So while you, as a person, may be able to open a bunch of Ltd.s online (e.g. in GB) in an hour, this means that all these would be in your name and all your data publicly available for everybody. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd like to learn more about this...

yardie 5y ago
Delaware LLCs take literal minutes and just a small amount of paperwork. We created a LLC because we bought a boat. since my partner wasn’t a US citizen it couldn’t be documented with her name on it so we created a LLC who technically owned it and me holding 50.1% ownership. Any documents to the LLC goes to a POBox in Delaware. There is very little attaching my name to it that you could find without a court order.
- imagine99 5y ago
  I get that. How would that help you do any money-laundering though? (Not saying that you would do that but that's the subject of the thread ;-)). You couldn't just set up a second or third Delaware LLC and move money back and forth between them with impunity... What I was saying is that I don't see how money-laundering is all that easy anymore nowadays, at least not for any normal person which is not part of a criminal organization (mafia etc.) with lots of members willing to do illegal stuff for them...
  - yardie 5y ago
    LLCs can't hurt nor hinder laundering. I was just pointing out that it's fairly easy to set one up. Developers do it all the time when they are trying to buy blocks of adjacent properties without revealing themselves to competitors or flippers. KYC and AML departments have made it a little more difficult but not impossibly so. I would wager it's gotten even easier with cryptocurrencies.

yardie 5y ago

Delaware LLCs take literal minutes and just a small amount of paperwork. We created a LLC because we bought a boat. since my partner wasn’t a US citizen it couldn’t be documented with her name on it so we created a LLC who technically owned it and me holding 50.1% ownership. Any documents to the LLC goes to a POBox in Delaware. There is very little attaching my name to it that you could find without a court order.

imagine99 5y ago
I get that. How would that help you do any money-laundering though? (Not saying that you would do that but that's the subject of the thread ;-)). You couldn't just set up a second or third Delaware LLC and move money back and forth between them with impunity... What I was saying is that I don't see how money-laundering is all that easy anymore nowadays, at least not for any normal person which is not part of a criminal organization (mafia etc.) with lots of members willing to do illegal stuff for them...
- yardie 5y ago
  LLCs can't hurt nor hinder laundering. I was just pointing out that it's fairly easy to set one up. Developers do it all the time when they are trying to buy blocks of adjacent properties without revealing themselves to competitors or flippers. KYC and AML departments have made it a little more difficult but not impossibly so. I would wager it's gotten even easier with cryptocurrencies.