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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

> This obscure Mac developer has 3 of the top 95 grossing apps in the Mac App Store.

I wonder if it's money laundering and most of the purchases aren't victims.

I've thought of this myself. Anecdotally, I once ran across a game on Steam which looked hastily put together with basic Unity store assets and had a single $5000 DLC... makes you wonder.

can you do the iap several times?

actually a fantastic idea. purchase gift cards with cash, credit into an apple account, do iaps, cash out as dev. how much will be lost underway? 30%?

where are the problems in that model?

> can you do the iap several times?

Yes, there's "consumable" IAPs for doing things like purchasing in-game currency in games.

The worst thing to happen to mobile apps.

You'd need appleid accounts to load the gift cards into. I guess it would be tricky to set those up without linking phone numbers / apple device serials / ip addresses to your scam all the while establishing a reputation and legit looking usage history for them

15% if you are big enough I believe

30% isn't terrible in terms of laundering money, but chances are the App Store payout is how you're citing your income for taxes, so it's more risky than other ventures if Apple were to inform the IRS about something like "90% of this developer's revenue is via gift cards...".

It is when NFTs are 0%.

I think also that it's often desirable to run multiple steps. Losing 30% from a whole pipeline is one thing, but losing 30% from one transaction out of a couple seems like a fairly big hit.

People already launder money with gift cards. Further laundering it through apps whose merchant accounts are registered to real human beings, because of Know Your Customer laws, ruins the laundering aspect. There's no reason to go through additional de-anonymizing steps via apps once you've got or sold gift cards.

Especially when Apple takes an obscene 30%

That is where the “Earn $XXX/mo for doing nothing” scams come in. The victim would be effectively laundering the money from any KYC. The victim would not be sophisticated enough to point law enforcement your way. So the chain would be gift card->app->patsy->you.

Aren't app store purchases easily tracked, on both the buyer and the merchant side? Which would make any money laundering attempt there easier to prosecute?

You can buy the gift cards with cash, pay for the app with that and get legitimate money in a bank account.

imo NFTs are easier for money laundering

If I was an AML analyst I'd scrutinize NFT/crypto transactions much more than Apple paying out (what looks like) a legitimate app development company.

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