5 ms·

Ozarks

by 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.
      - thaumasiotes 2y ago
        > 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). You might note that this scheme doesn't involve you owning the hotel to any degree. You only need to own the plumbing business. That's the opposite of the situation on the show.
- SilasX 2y ago
  >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. As I understand the show, they were buying overpriced things from cartel-owned enterprises, and that step was getting the money laundered to the client.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    That would make sense, but I don't think it's ever mentioned. It is specifically mentioned that Marty books expenses that he hasn't actually incurred, notionally buying things that he never receives, which will stand up to an audit much more poorly than "buying overpriced things from cartel-owned enterprises" would.
    - SilasX 2y ago
      There’s the scene where Marty takes rooms at the Blue Cat Lodge off the market for renovations, against Rachel’s objections that he wait for the off season, suggesting real stuff is actually being done to them. Then later she confronts him over paying ridiculous prices related for said renovations. (Where she also threatens to report him.) His cartel contact Del is mentioned as running a construction and remodeling business.
      - thaumasiotes 2y ago
        Yes, he does real renovations. But he notes to his wife that he's purchased X square feet of carpet at $Y per square foot, while accounting for it as XXX square feet at $YYY per foot. (Both figures much higher than the reality.) The difference between $YYY and $Y is money that was claimed to change hands, but never did, and the difference between XXX and X is carpeting that Marty has recorded himself purchasing, but not actually purchased. If he was buying the carpeting from a cartel-owned supplier, he'd just pay the inflated prices that he's so proud of booking without paying. Instead, he's buying real services from a real third party, and then booking fake expenses for unclear reasons.
        2y ago

Ozarks

by vinni2 2y ago

Ozarks

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.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      > 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). You might note that this scheme doesn't involve you owning the hotel to any degree. You only need to own the plumbing business. That's the opposite of the situation on the show.
SilasX 2y ago
>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. As I understand the show, they were buying overpriced things from cartel-owned enterprises, and that step was getting the money laundered to the client.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  That would make sense, but I don't think it's ever mentioned. It is specifically mentioned that Marty books expenses that he hasn't actually incurred, notionally buying things that he never receives, which will stand up to an audit much more poorly than "buying overpriced things from cartel-owned enterprises" would.
  - SilasX 2y ago
    There’s the scene where Marty takes rooms at the Blue Cat Lodge off the market for renovations, against Rachel’s objections that he wait for the off season, suggesting real stuff is actually being done to them. Then later she confronts him over paying ridiculous prices related for said renovations. (Where she also threatens to report him.) His cartel contact Del is mentioned as running a construction and remodeling business.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      Yes, he does real renovations. But he notes to his wife that he's purchased X square feet of carpet at $Y per square foot, while accounting for it as XXX square feet at $YYY per foot. (Both figures much higher than the reality.) The difference between $YYY and $Y is money that was claimed to change hands, but never did, and the difference between XXX and X is carpeting that Marty has recorded himself purchasing, but not actually purchased. If he was buying the carpeting from a cartel-owned supplier, he'd just pay the inflated prices that he's so proud of booking without paying. Instead, he's buying real services from a real third party, and then booking fake expenses for unclear reasons.
      - 2y ago