The elements for federal and state money laundering charges would be there. Lying to a bank, in a tri-partite merchant account agreement, email, or phone call, and then obtaining services from that bank, can come down on you as bank fraud, wire fraud, or mail fraud. Once you’re buttoned up on fraud, subsequent transfers of funds can be charged as money laundering. This is true for most states and under federal law.

In a hypothetical scenario where I saw this occurring, I would look for emails, texts, etc where you admit that you actually intend to sell memberships, and the T-shirt sales are merely to obtain payment processing services to get the fraud charges up.

Then I’d rack up the dollar amounts against you under money laundering statutes and stack them so you’d be looking at some pretty major prison time.

All this over selling some T-shirts to get a payment processor for your adult site? You bet! I’m working on very similar cases now.