4 ms·
It would be a big opportunity for money laundering, so I doubt it.
by emillon 13y ago
It would be a big opportunity for money laundering, so I doubt it.
- mike_hearn 13y agoOh please. You cannot "launder money" with Starbucks gift cards unless you use a completely ridiculous definition of the term (which occasionally you find over-enthusiastic regulators doing, but that is no excuse).
- fsckin 13y agoIf someone buys Starbucks gift cards with dirty money, by selling the gift card at a discount, you get laundered money back. It's could be even more advantageous if you sell the gift cards for bitcoins, which can be sent anywhere in the world and anonymously exchanged for cash in nearly any currency/country through localbitcoins.
- mike_hearn 13y agoThat's not how money laundering works. Let's say you start out with drug money. You would like to get this money into the banking system so you can use it to buy a house. This is a standard money laundering problem. If you turn up at the bank with bags full of cash, the bank will ask where you got that money from, and lots of proof that it was legitimate. They will also file paperwork with the government stating that you made suspicious transactions, or they might just deny you entirely. Obviously, you can't say "I got this money selling drugs" so you need a plausible explanation - this is what money launderers do. So you take your drug money and buy lots of gift cards. Then you resell them at a discount. What you get back is .... cash (or bitcoins which are essentially digital cash). So the bank asks you the same questions. Your explanation is, "I got this money selling gift cards at a loss". This does not hold water, will not be accepted by the bank and thus does not solve your problem, or even take a step towards solving your problem.
- Cravatosaur 13y agoLets say instead that you start out with stolen credit card numbers. The story is the same except now you at least end up with the cash.
- mike_hearn 13y agoA legitimate business being abused by carders is not money laundering either. If that was the case every single online store in existence would be guilty of money laundering. I've heard stories of some businesses that have seen 30-40% fraud rates on card transactions at times.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- almosnow 13y agoAlso, I hardly believe that the Starbucks gift card market has enough liquidity to be useful to launder a substantial amount of money, so nope, no laundering here...