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No it doesn’t work that way. You assume they can just move $20 million+ in cash out of the country just easily, then go to Syria of all places (and hope a terro

No it doesn’t work that way. You assume they can just move $20 million+ in cash out of the country just easily, then go to Syria of all places (and hope a terrorist or rebel group doesn’t murder them and take the cash) or Ecuador (and hope a cartel doesn’t do the same). Many armchair money launderers on HN cooking up unrealistic schemes.. There’s a reason real money launderers charge up to 50 cents on the dollar. It’s f** difficult.

walterbell 3y ago
https://insightcrime.org/news/chinese-money-launderers-mexico-cartels-move-millions-secret/ https://insightcrime.org/news/chinese-money-launderers-mexic... > While the involvement of Chinese money-laundering rings in handling drug proceeds from Mexico is nothing new, a number of recent court cases in the United States have revealed crucial information about how these schemes work ... weekly pick-ups from representatives of Mexican criminal groups, made in cash ranging between $150,000 and $1 million, with an average of $500,000. These were made in large cities including Chicago, New York and Atlanta ... network of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico ... transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps. This happened entirely through the Asian country’s domestic banking system ... “It’s the most sophisticated form of money laundering that’s ever existed,” one of the US sources told Reuters.
- sandspar 3y ago
  This is also literally one of the most complex, relationship-based, and opaque to outsiders communities on the planet. Try to wrap your head around the unimaginable clout and favor calling that this took to develop. "Exclusive" is an understatement. Nobody has free access to something like this.
  - which 3y ago
    It's basically the Chinese version of hawala except with drug dealers. A number of ethnicities have developed informal value transfer systems. Pretty sure it's well documented that everyday Argentinians use systems like this for getting money out of Argentina.
- stef25 3y ago
  After reading the article it's still not clear to me what's meant by "transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps". Jane picks up 500K in cash in Chicago and then transfers 450K from her business in China, to Joe's business in China. Joe then transfers 400K from his US account to Juan's account in the US. Is that how it works ?
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    yeah its just like Hawala system works It relies on everyone having other money already aside from the illicit funds
jajko 3y ago
'Ndrangheta are famous for laundering money for other cartels, criminal organizations etc. Tens of billions. They have hooks in many countries governments say in EU and launder billions ie via EU development funds (this happened in my home country on big scale, corrupt directly involved government fell, another came, rewind 4 years and the crooks are back and won elections, even stronger... ashamed where I come from)
- easyThrowaway 3y ago
  Yep. You don't go antagonistically against the system, you just corrupt it. I wonder what's the difference between the IRS and their French and Italian equivalent. For what I've experienced in both those countries, the easier path would be paying a percentage of the heist to whoever is making those checks.
ben_w 3y ago
> There’s a reason real money launderers charge up to 50 cents on the dollar. It’s f* difficult. I have no sense of scale for any of the things in this topic, my reaction to this is "only 50 cents?" because that would still leave these thieves with 15 million USD, which is significantly more than most Americans earn in their lifetimes.
Staple_Diet 3y ago
Honestly, rewatching Breaking Bad, and while fictional I have to commend the attention to detail and realism in their laundering process. The part where Skylar tells Walt that $7M would take up to 10yrs to rinse through their carwash business, or the fact that Saul takes 17% in addition to their other overheads. Ozark also nailed it when the lead tells the would-be robbers that they'd only be able to buy groceries with stolen cash, as large purchases would raise red flags. I find any US crime show that places the IRS above FBI, DEA etc in terms of fear factor is generally a better one.
tetha 3y ago
Reading up some on the difficulties of laundering money was one of the more interesting topics in the last few years for me, such as this video[1] It turns into a fascinating business and process problem, since you can only inject a certain percentage of dirty money into a legitimate cash revenue stream. And this in turn means - even if you had infinite dirty income, you end up with a finite amount of money you can launder per month. And marked bills make this a lot harder. And if attention comes to the business it becomes harder. And that in fact has happened in reality. Some cartels were earning so much dirty money that they couldn't launder it all. And in fact, just storage of the dirty cash became a real logistical issue. And to be honest, "storage of large amounts of illegal cash" hasn't been a problem on my radar so far. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viM_t5kIpGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viM_t5kIpGc
southernplaces7 3y ago
>No it doesn’t work that way. You assume they can just move $20 million+ in cash out of the country just easily, It does actually work exactly that way all the time. On the larger end, major drug traffickers routinely move millions in cash to Mexico and elsewhere with little trouble. On the smaller end, many lesser criminals and groups also do the same in creative ways. 20 million in cash is a lot, physically, but nowhere near enough to be really hard to move overseas through smuggling in several largish, carefully concealed shipments, especially if you can use a small part of that same money to pay for all kinds of object shipping arrangements.
sidewndr46 3y ago
You've got it backwards. You don't hope the cartel doesn't steal your money. You call them up and offer an easy 10% cut for their services. If it's their turf and they get their cut, everything is OK.

walterbell 3y ago

https://insightcrime.org/news/chinese-money-launderers-mexico-cartels-move-millions-secret/ https://insightcrime.org/news/chinese-money-launderers-mexic... > While the involvement of Chinese money-laundering rings in handling drug proceeds from Mexico is nothing new, a number of recent court cases in the United States have revealed crucial information about how these schemes work ... weekly pick-ups from representatives of Mexican criminal groups, made in cash ranging between $150,000 and $1 million, with an average of $500,000. These were made in large cities including Chicago, New York and Atlanta ... network of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico ... transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps. This happened entirely through the Asian country’s domestic banking system ... “It’s the most sophisticated form of money laundering that’s ever existed,” one of the US sources told Reuters.

sandspar 3y ago
This is also literally one of the most complex, relationship-based, and opaque to outsiders communities on the planet. Try to wrap your head around the unimaginable clout and favor calling that this took to develop. "Exclusive" is an understatement. Nobody has free access to something like this.
- which 3y ago
  It's basically the Chinese version of hawala except with drug dealers. A number of ethnicities have developed informal value transfer systems. Pretty sure it's well documented that everyday Argentinians use systems like this for getting money out of Argentina.
stef25 3y ago
After reading the article it's still not clear to me what's meant by "transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps". Jane picks up 500K in cash in Chicago and then transfers 450K from her business in China, to Joe's business in China. Joe then transfers 400K from his US account to Juan's account in the US. Is that how it works ?
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  yeah its just like Hawala system works It relies on everyone having other money already aside from the illicit funds

jajko 3y ago

'Ndrangheta are famous for laundering money for other cartels, criminal organizations etc. Tens of billions. They have hooks in many countries governments say in EU and launder billions ie via EU development funds (this happened in my home country on big scale, corrupt directly involved government fell, another came, rewind 4 years and the crooks are back and won elections, even stronger... ashamed where I come from)

easyThrowaway 3y ago
Yep. You don't go antagonistically against the system, you just corrupt it. I wonder what's the difference between the IRS and their French and Italian equivalent. For what I've experienced in both those countries, the easier path would be paying a percentage of the heist to whoever is making those checks.

ben_w 3y ago

> There’s a reason real money launderers charge up to 50 cents on the dollar. It’s f* difficult. I have no sense of scale for any of the things in this topic, my reaction to this is "only 50 cents?" because that would still leave these thieves with 15 million USD, which is significantly more than most Americans earn in their lifetimes.

Staple_Diet 3y ago

Honestly, rewatching Breaking Bad, and while fictional I have to commend the attention to detail and realism in their laundering process. The part where Skylar tells Walt that $7M would take up to 10yrs to rinse through their carwash business, or the fact that Saul takes 17% in addition to their other overheads. Ozark also nailed it when the lead tells the would-be robbers that they'd only be able to buy groceries with stolen cash, as large purchases would raise red flags. I find any US crime show that places the IRS above FBI, DEA etc in terms of fear factor is generally a better one.

tetha 3y ago

Reading up some on the difficulties of laundering money was one of the more interesting topics in the last few years for me, such as this video[1] It turns into a fascinating business and process problem, since you can only inject a certain percentage of dirty money into a legitimate cash revenue stream. And this in turn means - even if you had infinite dirty income, you end up with a finite amount of money you can launder per month. And marked bills make this a lot harder. And if attention comes to the business it becomes harder. And that in fact has happened in reality. Some cartels were earning so much dirty money that they couldn't launder it all. And in fact, just storage of the dirty cash became a real logistical issue. And to be honest, "storage of large amounts of illegal cash" hasn't been a problem on my radar so far. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viM_t5kIpGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viM_t5kIpGc

southernplaces7 3y ago

>No it doesn’t work that way. You assume they can just move $20 million+ in cash out of the country just easily, It does actually work exactly that way all the time. On the larger end, major drug traffickers routinely move millions in cash to Mexico and elsewhere with little trouble. On the smaller end, many lesser criminals and groups also do the same in creative ways. 20 million in cash is a lot, physically, but nowhere near enough to be really hard to move overseas through smuggling in several largish, carefully concealed shipments, especially if you can use a small part of that same money to pay for all kinds of object shipping arrangements.

sidewndr46 3y ago

You've got it backwards. You don't hope the cartel doesn't steal your money. You call them up and offer an easy 10% cut for their services. If it's their turf and they get their cut, everything is OK.