So? Monero also makes it trivial to create a fake paper trail for the origins of your money.
This is really basic stuff. You will never be caught unless other evidence leads them from the original crime to you.
Unless you fuck up it’s not possible to link incoming Moneroj to any specific source, this means that you can fairly easily hide your money laundering activities even from somebody with full visibility into your business.
Unlike criminal law where you are "innocent until proven guilty", in most AML/KYC situations you are "guilty until proven innocent".
I’ve dealt with AML/KYC for cryptocurrency businesses with much higher volumes, nobody ever asked for anything crazy. Just basic accounting, website urls, linkedin profiles.
> You live in some fantasy land if you think you can just say "oh, I just received 100 dollars worth of Monero from 1 million unknown entities, my $100 million is totally legit, fuck off"
I think the only takeaway here is that “323” is too stupid and greedy to survive as a money launderer. Don’t try to cash out $100M in monero at once, live a wonderful life with $5-10M a year.
Were they legit businesses or illegal?
It makes a difference because there's more than just you and the KYC exchanges reporting, and it's survivor bias to assume they appear the same.
> It makes a difference because there's more than just you and the KYC exchanges reporting, and it's survivor bias to assume they appear the same.
Exchanges are usually the least of your problems, it’s the banks.
Even very high risk businesses don’t face scrutiny which isn’t easily overcome when all of your incoming payments are anonymous and untraceable. It’s really not hard to create a fake ecommerce business that would be entirely indistinguishable from a real one.
White collar law enforcement is an illusion, backed by the occasional example.
There are 13k FBI special agents and most have case loads focused on things like "murder" than some e-commerce website with traffic numbers that don't add up.
A one hour cursory look on public clearnet hacking forums will surface hundreds of felonies by people with poor opsec, Feds scroll past them on a daily basis. It's not what they're after.
And no, the IRS has been trimmed to bones for decades, they probably audit <10 laundromats via water and power analysis a year, the same way Apple built literally two iPhone recycling robots (that do a thousand devices a year) but spend millions on marketing.
That's the harsh truth.
Where I live, THC is illegal, and its distribution usually ends with time served.
Interestingly, CBD (more accurately THC-less) stores are everywhere, taking prime locations in city centers, blaring thousands of positive reviews on Google Maps. Their top product is CBD oil (or rather, THC-less cannabis oil). Prices of their products are suspiciously similar to that of their illegal counterparts.
Yet when you pass in front of such stores, there's usually just a single person tending, sometimes with a friend because it gets boring as there's virtually no customer.
It's basically the caffeine pills + decaffeinated coffee product split, where caffeine is illegal.
Following the supply chain would not only find the laundering, but also the distribution and production of a substance considered illegal.
But cops stick to chasing dealers, and the fisc doesn't really chase businesses that seem to pay their taxes.
Second, just obviously spend a little money and time on those things? It’s a minor cost to run shitty ad campaigns.
The business doesn’t need to be good, it just has to look real. Do things a real business would do, except unlike a real business you will have a 100% chance of success.
That's pretty much the whole NFT craze, but without Monero which makes it even dumber.
You pay taxes on stolen gains. The IRS is explicitly forbidden from reporting the gains themselves.
>IRC 6103(i)(1) provides that, pursuant to court order, return information may be shared with law enforcement agencies for investigation and prosecution of non-tax criminal laws.