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It sounds like you have no idea what money laundering actually is, to be honest. Money laundering is concealing the source of illegally obtained money. You use

It sounds like you have no idea what money laundering actually is, to be honest. Money laundering is concealing the source of illegally obtained money. You use stolen credit cards to buy gift cards (or just defraud people to obtain gift cards). This is dirty money. You pay it to yourself on the App Store by getting an app listed and buying it. Apple then deposits money (minus their 30% cut) in your bank account, which is clean money. How is that not money laundering?

moralestapia 3y ago
[flagged]
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  > That's the dumbest way one could launder money. So now you’re admitting the scenario I proposed is money laundering. Have a nice day :)
  - moralestapia 3y ago
    [flagged]
- jholman 3y ago
  Wait, your argument is "this suspension by Apple couldn't be due to Apple catching them laundering money" because "this isn't money laundering" because "if someone laundered money this way, they would get caught"? Do you not understand that you just destroyed your own argument? And I have inside knowledge that you're wrong at least much of the time. This particular case, I have no idea, but extremely competent teams inside FAANG believe that there are many billions of dollars of attempted money laundering of this form, that they catch and stop.
matwood 3y ago
The stolen CCs are not part of the laundering (that's just fraud/theft). I think it's easier to talk about laundering cash from drug sales. You buy an Apple Gift card with the cash. Use the gift card to buy jewels in an app you control, and now you have cleaned your drug money. The challenge with doing this at scale on the App Store is the account requirement. Apple also likely has controls on how many gift cards you can redeem over a period of time. You also need an app that looks plausibly functional. The amount of money people supposedly spend on gems or whatever will help though.

moralestapia 3y ago

[flagged]

quickthrowman 3y ago
> That's the dumbest way one could launder money. So now you’re admitting the scenario I proposed is money laundering. Have a nice day :)
- moralestapia 3y ago
  [flagged]
jholman 3y ago
Wait, your argument is "this suspension by Apple couldn't be due to Apple catching them laundering money" because "this isn't money laundering" because "if someone laundered money this way, they would get caught"? Do you not understand that you just destroyed your own argument? And I have inside knowledge that you're wrong at least much of the time. This particular case, I have no idea, but extremely competent teams inside FAANG believe that there are many billions of dollars of attempted money laundering of this form, that they catch and stop.

matwood 3y ago

The stolen CCs are not part of the laundering (that's just fraud/theft). I think it's easier to talk about laundering cash from drug sales. You buy an Apple Gift card with the cash. Use the gift card to buy jewels in an app you control, and now you have cleaned your drug money. The challenge with doing this at scale on the App Store is the account requirement. Apple also likely has controls on how many gift cards you can redeem over a period of time. You also need an app that looks plausibly functional. The amount of money people supposedly spend on gems or whatever will help though.