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Comment by zxcvbn4038 | Hacker News Reader

The Mexican cartels will buy winning lottery tickets, full value, cash up front. Then when authorities question the source of their income, oh the guy has a nice house because he won the lottery fourteen times, here is all the documentation, here are the bank records showing the reoccurring deposits. Oh, and it’s not his nice house, he rents it. The cars are all leased. Legitimate income, no assets, even pays taxes - your move Johnny Law.

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I hadn't heard of that. I know casinos had been a good way to launder money (buy $100,000 worth of chips, lose $5,000, cash out for $95,000), but I think they caught on to that.

The best way today is to give the money to friends and family and then have them give it back to you as a gift. Gift income is legitimate, the IRS can’t go challenge the people and ask where they got the money to give to you.

IIRC you can only gift in the range of 5 figures/year/person.

> the IRS can’t go challenge the people and ask where they got the money to give to you

Isn't that what the IRS very much does?

You're moving the risk to your "friends".

Or more likely, to a bunch of mules you found on the internet who want to believe that they have a job sending money back and forth.

All of us are script kiddies in this game. My bet is, the real cartels have moved way beyond anything that any of us knows about. Art, jewels, shell companies, real estate... the list of possibilities goes on.

That said; banks have to report any transaction that's large ($10,000 is it?), no matter to whom. I'd add "even if it's a gift" although I only suspect that's true.

There is always the old trick of just depositing the cash into safe deposit boxes - all the protection of a bank with none of the reporting. Works best if the bank is more then thirty miles from your home and business.

> safe deposit boxes - all the protection of a bank

Nope: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34266095

But how do they give it to you? If it's cash that’s going to raise all sorts of red flags.

Thats why the KYC and cash deposits are such a focus. The financial world is basically split into “money in the system” (where tracking source and destination are easy) and “money outside the system” (cash which is anonymous).

The government has just made it really hard to get money “into the system”. Its basically the chokepoint where you catch money from illegal sources.

Hard, but not impossible. Probably they just raised the commission that a money launderer charges you, which is progress I guess.

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