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While I can agree that something about the business seems sketchy as hell, I don't see how it would be money laundering. Do you think they're buying a bunch of

While I can agree that something about the business seems sketchy as hell, I don't see how it would be money laundering. Do you think they're buying a bunch of YouTube sponsorships with drug money to then attract customers to an unprofitable business? Or they're buying their product themselves and then advertising to make it seem like they have a legitimate business?

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
For laundering, the more legitimate cash flow the better. The less actual work, also the better. Throw money at Youtubers, they make the ads for you. Indiscriminately approve the sponsor spots(Check out IncognitoMode's sponsor spots. He practically designs his spots to be unapprovable. NordVPN will always work with him anyway. They don't seem to care). You get lots of customers, charge them enough that a large profit margin is to be expected. Botnet users to save even more cost on getting hosts. Log user data and sell it on dark markets. That's the money you can then launder with your large clean cashflow. At least that's the sort of set up I had in mind. The datamining and botnetting is possibly optional. Dirty money could also be from any other criminal activity, maybe crypto scams or some other e-crime. Or just drugs/sex trafficking. Or here's a wildly speculative one: use your vpn service to aggregate CSAM and sell that on the dark web, then launder the money via your seemingly legit vpn service. Bonus: keep logs for blackmail purposes in case your Dark Web enterprise craters. Blackmail futures! I feel like I could sit here all day listing viable ways of building a nasty, disturbingly profitable criminal enterprise under the guise of a VPN service. (I swear I'm not a criminal I just know how to think like one).
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  You've described many malicious things they could do, but none of it is really money laundering. And if your goal was money laundering, I'd assume you'd want to make that business look as clean as possible, not a VPN we can all agree appears shady as hell.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

For laundering, the more legitimate cash flow the better. The less actual work, also the better. Throw money at Youtubers, they make the ads for you. Indiscriminately approve the sponsor spots(Check out IncognitoMode's sponsor spots. He practically designs his spots to be unapprovable. NordVPN will always work with him anyway. They don't seem to care). You get lots of customers, charge them enough that a large profit margin is to be expected. Botnet users to save even more cost on getting hosts. Log user data and sell it on dark markets. That's the money you can then launder with your large clean cashflow. At least that's the sort of set up I had in mind. The datamining and botnetting is possibly optional. Dirty money could also be from any other criminal activity, maybe crypto scams or some other e-crime. Or just drugs/sex trafficking. Or here's a wildly speculative one: use your vpn service to aggregate CSAM and sell that on the dark web, then launder the money via your seemingly legit vpn service. Bonus: keep logs for blackmail purposes in case your Dark Web enterprise craters. Blackmail futures! I feel like I could sit here all day listing viable ways of building a nasty, disturbingly profitable criminal enterprise under the guise of a VPN service. (I swear I'm not a criminal I just know how to think like one).

boomboomsubban 4y ago
You've described many malicious things they could do, but none of it is really money laundering. And if your goal was money laundering, I'd assume you'd want to make that business look as clean as possible, not a VPN we can all agree appears shady as hell.