3 ms·

1. Bribery absolutely exists at the lower levels of US agencies, it is just less prevalent than it is elsewhere. The people at the DMV or IRS are not going to

1. Bribery absolutely exists at the lower levels of US agencies, it is just less prevalent than it is elsewhere. The people at the DMV or IRS are not going to blatantly ask for a bribe, but from time to time you can hear news of some low-level worker being arrested for accepting payments for illegal transactions. 2. Auditing is strong. It is hard to spend "off the books" money in the US, except in very tiny amounts. This is such a serious problem for criminals that the mafia has been known to play the lottery as a form of money laundering. 3. Government salaries are sufficient for the things bribes might buy elsewhere: your own apartment, a functioning car, the cost of children, an occasional vacation, etc. The incentives to take bribes are lower here. [EDIT: Also worth mentioning is that the incentives to give bribes are lower. You do not need to bribe anyone to get a passport, a plane ticket, permission to buy or sell a car, etc. It is only when you start looking at things that most people never deal with that you will start seeing bribery: permits to build large buildings, exemptions from environmental rules, etc.] [EDIT: Example for point 1: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eleven-arrested-driver-license-scam-article-1.1467800 https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eleven-arrested-driver-...]

roel_v 13y ago
"This is such a serious problem for criminals that the mafia has been known to play the lottery as a form of money laundering." I wanted to comment on this that if you are referring to what I think you're referring to, it's not quite how you make it seem. The expected yield on a lottery ticket is somewhere in the magnitude of 50-70%, meaning: if you buy a lot of tickets, you will probably get a net yield of something between those numbers. However, the large amounts of tickets you have to buy / check / redeem do not make this a viable laundering strategy. You'll leave traces if you do this at scale, for example if you bought the owner of a local bodega to get you tickets 'wholesale', like boxes at a time; then the lotteries will easily spot patterns of sellers doing unusual transactions. What I think you are referring to, is the (alleged) practice of criminals paying above-market prices (in cash) for casino chips or lottery tickets. Let's say you win $100. For a criminal, if he pays you $110 for that ticket, he has a laundering cost of only 9%, because he can redeem that ticket as 100$ in clean money. 9% is quite cheap; it's not uncommon to account for 30, 40% in costs when laundering money. And since lotteries and casinos are about big amounts, you only need one such transaction to launder sizable amounts. As the original winner, you end up with more than you won, but you can spend it only on holidays, restaurants and other cash-friendly activities. (all examples are ignoring taxes etc, for which you'd have to correct to make the numbers work in reality)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
mtdewcmu 13y ago
> from time to time you can hear news of some low-level worker being arrested for accepting payments for illegal transactions The fact that you hear about low-level workers taking bribes shows how profoundly uncommon it is.
_delirium 13y ago
you can hear news of some low-level worker being arrested for accepting payments for illegal transactions This does happen, but it might be worth distinguishing two kinds of low-level bribery: 1) clerks can be bribed to look the other way on something, or even assist in it, usually "out-of-band" when you've meet them elsewhere and arranged a plan; or 2) clerks must be bribed by slipping them some cash to get legal things done. The U.S. has almost none of #2: if you legitimately have business with a government office, you can just follow the official rules, file your paperwork, and it'll get processed in line. In some countries you're expected to slip in a $20 with the paperwork, or it will never get processed, while doing so in the U.S would probably either not help, or actually delay your paperwork as the clerk figures out what additional paperwork they need to file about this unexpected cash. It's completely unexpected and usually unwelcome to do that kind of "cold" bribe, where you just slip someone you've never met some money; they might even suspect you of being a cop. Both are bad, but in somewhat different ways; #2 is particularly influential on corruption perceptions, because regular people run into it when doing mundane things.

roel_v 13y ago

"This is such a serious problem for criminals that the mafia has been known to play the lottery as a form of money laundering." I wanted to comment on this that if you are referring to what I think you're referring to, it's not quite how you make it seem. The expected yield on a lottery ticket is somewhere in the magnitude of 50-70%, meaning: if you buy a lot of tickets, you will probably get a net yield of something between those numbers. However, the large amounts of tickets you have to buy / check / redeem do not make this a viable laundering strategy. You'll leave traces if you do this at scale, for example if you bought the owner of a local bodega to get you tickets 'wholesale', like boxes at a time; then the lotteries will easily spot patterns of sellers doing unusual transactions. What I think you are referring to, is the (alleged) practice of criminals paying above-market prices (in cash) for casino chips or lottery tickets. Let's say you win $100. For a criminal, if he pays you $110 for that ticket, he has a laundering cost of only 9%, because he can redeem that ticket as 100$ in clean money. 9% is quite cheap; it's not uncommon to account for 30, 40% in costs when laundering money. And since lotteries and casinos are about big amounts, you only need one such transaction to launder sizable amounts. As the original winner, you end up with more than you won, but you can spend it only on holidays, restaurants and other cash-friendly activities. (all examples are ignoring taxes etc, for which you'd have to correct to make the numbers work in reality)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

mtdewcmu 13y ago

> from time to time you can hear news of some low-level worker being arrested for accepting payments for illegal transactions The fact that you hear about low-level workers taking bribes shows how profoundly uncommon it is.

_delirium 13y ago

you can hear news of some low-level worker being arrested for accepting payments for illegal transactions This does happen, but it might be worth distinguishing two kinds of low-level bribery: 1) clerks can be bribed to look the other way on something, or even assist in it, usually "out-of-band" when you've meet them elsewhere and arranged a plan; or 2) clerks must be bribed by slipping them some cash to get legal things done. The U.S. has almost none of #2: if you legitimately have business with a government office, you can just follow the official rules, file your paperwork, and it'll get processed in line. In some countries you're expected to slip in a $20 with the paperwork, or it will never get processed, while doing so in the U.S would probably either not help, or actually delay your paperwork as the clerk figures out what additional paperwork they need to file about this unexpected cash. It's completely unexpected and usually unwelcome to do that kind of "cold" bribe, where you just slip someone you've never met some money; they might even suspect you of being a cop. Both are bad, but in somewhat different ways; #2 is particularly influential on corruption perceptions, because regular people run into it when doing mundane things.