3 ms·

I’d probably “dig it up from my backyard because I’m a newly minted metal detector hobbyist” or something. If the bills were marked though I think your point is

by dgfitz 2y ago

I’d probably “dig it up from my backyard because I’m a newly minted metal detector hobbyist” or something. If the bills were marked though I think your point is solid, it’s hard to make bad money clean. Find some millionaire to pay you your own money for a job or something, give them 10%? I guess you still need to launder the money somehow. Now I want to know how people can turn illegal cash millions into clean laundered money in 2024.

vinni2 2y ago
Ozarks
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  The TV show seemed fairly incoherent in its treatment of money laundering. They're explicit about the mechanics, sort of: the idea is that Marty shows up in a rural area with a big bag of cash and he needs to make it appear legitimate - and he does this by taking ownership stakes in local businesses. So far so good. What you'd actually want, in that kind of setup, is to hand the active owner of the business you just partnered with a big bag of cash, see that distributed into the flow of legitimate income from the business, and then have it returned to you as dividends or whatever on your ownership stake. But in the show, the goal is to then book a bunch of fake expenses against the business. So: 1. Purchase ownership stake in a hotel, for cash. The cash doesn't need to be legitimate. Money is transferred from you to the active owner. 2. Book fraudulent expenses for the hotel, making it look like it's spent a lot more money than it really has. No actual money changes hands anywhere. 3. Now you have a piddling amount of legitimate money from the hotel, and a big bag of illegitimate cash that you still haven't laundered. We've skipped the step where you hand the owner some of your illegitimate cash under the table and then the owner gives it back to you above the table, which is the part of money laundering that launders the money. If you want to embezzle from a running business while making your expenses look like business expenses, you can just do that; you don't need to start with a pile of illegitimate cash.
  - defrost 2y ago
    The part they likely obfuscated for reasons of both brevity and not wishing to give a blueprint to wanna be criminals is also having a stake in the other businesses that invoice for the fake expenses. eg: Your (say) hotel | bar falsely inflates customer income and then spends the illegitimate cash (supposedly from customers that don't exist) on rennovation works and "new" carpets, plumbing, etc that don't exist - the shell trades companies (carpentry, plumbing, labor hire) can report that money as legitimate washed income from the hotel. There are a number of variations of this.
    - krisoft 2y ago
      I don’t understand the scheme you are describing. If you have a hotel/bar and you falsely inflate the customer income then you are done. The previously illegitimate cash is now legitimate. Why would you want to complicate it more with the fake rennovation works? Especially when a hotel is so much easier. You can just put fake guests on the book. (Or report longer stays for your real guests.) With the renovation business you have to somehow cook up bills for the “new” materials and the workforce. So many more things the authorities could check there and thus so many more chances to slip up and get caught.
      - defrost 2y ago
        Without getting into the nitty gritty of trace back forensic accounting the added layer is akin to why people use proxy relay's in networking, diffusing cash outwards through layered shell companies makes the origin point(s) less visibly "hot". The ideal here is to have many injection points that can be inflated to a degree that doesn't quite raise suspicion .. and fewer collection filters (fake plumbing businesses, etc) that each 'charge' several injection points for non existant work and pool money that's invoiced and trackable (from hotel to plumber). Also, as noted by SilasX in a peer comment the books for the fake work can include higher than normal payments for "supplies" to cartel owned suppliers .. yet another (fake but) documented trail to explain income and profits. As the pooled money grows larger it's increasingly better documented. It's literally a full time occupation to generate a mountainous pyramid of a paper trail to "explain" a million or so a week.

by dgfitz 2y ago

vinni2 2y ago

Ozarks

thaumasiotes 2y ago
The TV show seemed fairly incoherent in its treatment of money laundering. They're explicit about the mechanics, sort of: the idea is that Marty shows up in a rural area with a big bag of cash and he needs to make it appear legitimate - and he does this by taking ownership stakes in local businesses. So far so good. What you'd actually want, in that kind of setup, is to hand the active owner of the business you just partnered with a big bag of cash, see that distributed into the flow of legitimate income from the business, and then have it returned to you as dividends or whatever on your ownership stake. But in the show, the goal is to then book a bunch of fake expenses against the business. So: 1. Purchase ownership stake in a hotel, for cash. The cash doesn't need to be legitimate. Money is transferred from you to the active owner. 2. Book fraudulent expenses for the hotel, making it look like it's spent a lot more money than it really has. No actual money changes hands anywhere. 3. Now you have a piddling amount of legitimate money from the hotel, and a big bag of illegitimate cash that you still haven't laundered. We've skipped the step where you hand the owner some of your illegitimate cash under the table and then the owner gives it back to you above the table, which is the part of money laundering that launders the money. If you want to embezzle from a running business while making your expenses look like business expenses, you can just do that; you don't need to start with a pile of illegitimate cash.
- defrost 2y ago
  The part they likely obfuscated for reasons of both brevity and not wishing to give a blueprint to wanna be criminals is also having a stake in the other businesses that invoice for the fake expenses. eg: Your (say) hotel | bar falsely inflates customer income and then spends the illegitimate cash (supposedly from customers that don't exist) on rennovation works and "new" carpets, plumbing, etc that don't exist - the shell trades companies (carpentry, plumbing, labor hire) can report that money as legitimate washed income from the hotel. There are a number of variations of this.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    I don’t understand the scheme you are describing. If you have a hotel/bar and you falsely inflate the customer income then you are done. The previously illegitimate cash is now legitimate. Why would you want to complicate it more with the fake rennovation works? Especially when a hotel is so much easier. You can just put fake guests on the book. (Or report longer stays for your real guests.) With the renovation business you have to somehow cook up bills for the “new” materials and the workforce. So many more things the authorities could check there and thus so many more chances to slip up and get caught.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Without getting into the nitty gritty of trace back forensic accounting the added layer is akin to why people use proxy relay's in networking, diffusing cash outwards through layered shell companies makes the origin point(s) less visibly "hot". The ideal here is to have many injection points that can be inflated to a degree that doesn't quite raise suspicion .. and fewer collection filters (fake plumbing businesses, etc) that each 'charge' several injection points for non existant work and pool money that's invoiced and trackable (from hotel to plumber). Also, as noted by SilasX in a peer comment the books for the fake work can include higher than normal payments for "supplies" to cartel owned suppliers .. yet another (fake but) documented trail to explain income and profits. As the pooled money grows larger it's increasingly better documented. It's literally a full time occupation to generate a mountainous pyramid of a paper trail to "explain" a million or so a week.