> Its single branch had three employees until this year, and didn't offer online banking or even credit cards. It instead specialised in agricultural loans to farmers.
> For a decade, Farmington's bank held around $10 million in deposits. In the third quarter this year, deposits jumped to $84 million – 85% of which came from just four accounts, according to FDIC data cited by the Times.
> The town of Farmington has just 146 residents, and is so small that Google Street View doesn't cover the whole town.
I mean, it definitely looks like they were looking for a tiny, out-of-the-way place to do shady stuff. That said (and this is a rookie question for you financial crime geeks out there):
Why buy a bank?
If you’re a criminal and your goal is to launder money, what does owning a bank do that owning a (for example) car wash or funeral home or laser tag venue doesn’t? Is it purely a scale thing? Given all the regulatory hoops you’d have to jump through in order to buy a bank, I’d think there would be other ways to achieve the same scale with less oversight.
Also, if you’re going to buy a bank, I get why you’d want to buy a small one (smaller purchase price and fewer headlines). But wouldn’t a sudden order-of-magnitude increase in assets or loans made (or whatever) set off a ton of red flags at the SEC, FDIC, and various other federal and state agencies?