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A casino isn't a "knowing participant" to any specific crime — no criminal comes up to them and makes a deal to launder money through the casino. But casinos (

by derefr 2y ago

A casino isn't a "knowing participant" to any specific crime — no criminal comes up to them and makes a deal to launder money through the casino. But casinos (for example) have a tacit agreement with the "criminal industry" in general, that criminals will be able to inherently launder money through the cash-in/cash-out mechanisms of the casino, in exchange for having to play some table games (and therefore lose at least a small percentage of their money, i.e. give a percentage of their ill-gotten gains to the casino) to make everything look legitimate. If a given business has a business model where it would not possibly stay afloat over the long term, if not for some appreciable fraction of its customer base making use of the business for money laundering — then the business is a "knowing participant" to the general concept of money laundering, even if they have never shaken hands with any specific criminals. Their MBAs knowingly design the business around enabling money laundering. Come to think of it, this is a bit like the argument the US DOJ used to take down Napster — which actually, finally somewhat convinces me of the logic they used. The Napster company's business model depended upon some appreciable fraction of its clientele being IP pirates. For everyone else, Napster was a vitamin; but for pirates, Napster was a painkiller. Napster would never have achieved spread without a core base of pirates to spread it. The Napster company's business model (presumably something like "make the software widely used, then sell ads that display in the client" or something) depended on — was planned around — piracy. Thus, Napster was in tacit collusion with pirates; just as most money launderers are in tacit collusion with gangsters.

joncrocks 2y ago
Isn't that the reason that (at least in the US) cashing out over a certain size requires ID? So that large amounts of cash can't be laundered easily in this way?
- derefr 2y ago
  Yes, and the point where that became enforced, was pretty much the point where casinos in the US were sold off from the gangs that generally owned them up to that point, to “entertainment tycoons” who turned them into the “arcades for adults” / “cruise ships on land” they’re known as today. The US just got uniquely "lucky" here, in that the people who bought up the casinos from the gangs, had a business plan that involved making Las Vegas et al "family friendly", which required moving as far away from the casinos' previous "gang-affiliated" image as possible. As such, they had no plans related to continuing to tacitly launder money for the gangs; instead looking specifically for that kind of signature and stopping it when they notice it. (The shared Vegas-casino blacklist exists 1% to stop card counters, and 99% to stop organized criminals.) Elsewhere in the world, this particular story didn't play out the same way, though. So casinos elsewhere are still mostly money-laundering fronts. Not always operated by gangs, but often operated under the implicit business-model assumption of gangs. What you'll see in your average casino-allowing country — Australia, say — are casino businesses run by regular people, who get very little traffic from regular gamblers (nobody travels to Australia to gamble), who do zero investment into making the casino attractive to regular people... and who instead concentrate all their effort on making sure that gangs — some even state-affiliated, apparently! — can continue to launder money through the casinos with ease. Though, for an example of very explicit gang-casino involvement, there's the Golden Triangle, containing casinos owned directly by a particular gang — where it isn’t the gang members themselves (or their proxies) cashing in and out to wash money; but instead, customers of the gang’s drug business, cashing in at the casino, and then proceeding to lose all their money at the table, as their way of making payment for a drug shipment from the gang.

by derefr 2y ago

joncrocks 2y ago

Isn't that the reason that (at least in the US) cashing out over a certain size requires ID? So that large amounts of cash can't be laundered easily in this way?

derefr 2y ago
Yes, and the point where that became enforced, was pretty much the point where casinos in the US were sold off from the gangs that generally owned them up to that point, to “entertainment tycoons” who turned them into the “arcades for adults” / “cruise ships on land” they’re known as today. The US just got uniquely "lucky" here, in that the people who bought up the casinos from the gangs, had a business plan that involved making Las Vegas et al "family friendly", which required moving as far away from the casinos' previous "gang-affiliated" image as possible. As such, they had no plans related to continuing to tacitly launder money for the gangs; instead looking specifically for that kind of signature and stopping it when they notice it. (The shared Vegas-casino blacklist exists 1% to stop card counters, and 99% to stop organized criminals.) Elsewhere in the world, this particular story didn't play out the same way, though. So casinos elsewhere are still mostly money-laundering fronts. Not always operated by gangs, but often operated under the implicit business-model assumption of gangs. What you'll see in your average casino-allowing country — Australia, say — are casino businesses run by regular people, who get very little traffic from regular gamblers (nobody travels to Australia to gamble), who do zero investment into making the casino attractive to regular people... and who instead concentrate all their effort on making sure that gangs — some even state-affiliated, apparently! — can continue to launder money through the casinos with ease. Though, for an example of very explicit gang-casino involvement, there's the Golden Triangle, containing casinos owned directly by a particular gang — where it isn’t the gang members themselves (or their proxies) cashing in and out to wash money; but instead, customers of the gang’s drug business, cashing in at the casino, and then proceeding to lose all their money at the table, as their way of making payment for a drug shipment from the gang.