> “There aren’t many places this amount of cash can go.”
Sure, buddy.
Sure, buddy.
A few thousand last minute tables “sold” at Coachella side parties will do the same
LA / Socal has so many things and a big enough spread out enough economy to wash any amount
Can use a design studio “by appointment only” with some phantom customers and phantom projects the studio is paid for
I could keep going.
who put my email in my bio, that’s weird
Take your first example: the music festival promoter shows up at his bank with a duffel bag of cash -- that's not unusual until suddenly every single missing serial number lights up the bank's cash handling systems.
Busted.
It's possible to launder marked cash, but it has to be in such small quantities that it's always plausible that it was simply spent in circulation, which in practice dramatically limits the speed with which it can be laundered.
Probably the single most straightforward approach to dispose of marked bills would be to swap for unmarked cash with someone who doesn't care, like an overseas drug lord. But man, good luck with that.
Many armchair money launderers on HN cooking up unrealistic schemes..
There’s a reason real money launderers charge up to 50 cents on the dollar. It’s f** difficult.
> While the involvement of Chinese money-laundering rings in handling drug proceeds from Mexico is nothing new, a number of recent court cases in the United States have revealed crucial information about how these schemes work ... weekly pick-ups from representatives of Mexican criminal groups, made in cash ranging between $150,000 and $1 million, with an average of $500,000. These were made in large cities including Chicago, New York and Atlanta ... network of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico ... transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps. This happened entirely through the Asian country’s domestic banking system ... “It’s the most sophisticated form of money laundering that’s ever existed,” one of the US sources told Reuters.
Jane picks up 500K in cash in Chicago and then transfers 450K from her business in China, to Joe's business in China. Joe then transfers 400K from his US account to Juan's account in the US.
Is that how it works ?
It relies on everyone having other money already aside from the illicit funds
I wonder what's the difference between the IRS and their French and Italian equivalent. For what I've experienced in both those countries, the easier path would be paying a percentage of the heist to whoever is making those checks.
I have no sense of scale for any of the things in this topic, my reaction to this is "only 50 cents?" because that would still leave these thieves with 15 million USD, which is significantly more than most Americans earn in their lifetimes.
I find any US crime show that places the IRS above FBI, DEA etc in terms of fear factor is generally a better one.
It turns into a fascinating business and process problem, since you can only inject a certain percentage of dirty money into a legitimate cash revenue stream. And this in turn means - even if you had infinite dirty income, you end up with a finite amount of money you can launder per month. And marked bills make this a lot harder. And if attention comes to the business it becomes harder.
And that in fact has happened in reality. Some cartels were earning so much dirty money that they couldn't launder it all. And in fact, just storage of the dirty cash became a real logistical issue. And to be honest, "storage of large amounts of illegal cash" hasn't been a problem on my radar so far.
It does actually work exactly that way all the time. On the larger end, major drug traffickers routinely move millions in cash to Mexico and elsewhere with little trouble.
On the smaller end, many lesser criminals and groups also do the same in creative ways. 20 million in cash is a lot, physically, but nowhere near enough to be really hard to move overseas through smuggling in several largish, carefully concealed shipments, especially if you can use a small part of that same money to pay for all kinds of object shipping arrangements.
If you get caught with over $10,000 undeclared at any US border or at the corresponding border, it gets seized
If you declare it, it gets seized.
The Mexicans usually don’t bother.
And in both cases, most remote crossings are unmonitored.
I don’t think financial institutions care as much as you’re assuming, and there are alot of types of organizations that count as institutions - where the whole anti money laundering regime relies on trusting that the other institution vetted the money - but assuming they do care, it means avoiding them in alot of ways
I still think reintegration can be done with just cash payment, and cash investment into a revenue producing business. But what you’re saying does rely on the recipient also not depositing into a bank for some time until there are enough other dollars intermingled too. What’s “enough”?
There are workarounds even for that, such as shipping the money overseas and using it in places that love US dollars but don't much care for cash transaction reporting rules.
However, I doubt any group as apparently pro as these guys, who seem to have known exactly what to hit and when for a ton of money, would have done so without first also verifying that the serial numbers weren't recorded. I'd bet that they werent, at least not yet.
Considering how ‘cost efficient’ they were being on security, hard to imagine they were maintaining detailed databases of each serial number for this cash. These are the same folks that bitch and whine over $.25/hr raises for their employees.
There are machines for this. Garda absolutely has them.
They just didn’t have them installed here for whatever insane reason.
I don’t think they would be but I’m trying to play along and work around that too
and trying to stay under $10k is illegal structuring too, if flagged
There is still a trail with that method.
there are gaps in the AML/KYC framework but I don’t think this a good one
2 edits: wash isn't really the right word because you still can't prove where you got it. Secondly, you'd potentially be showing yourself on video so that's a significant risk.
The software is specifically designed to track people between cameras, to be able to point to a person and 'rewind' their movements, to be able to say "which people played these three slots between 10pm and 11pm", etc.
Hell, you could find the lowest volatility game such as video poker that has a 99.5% hold and play it for a calculated amount to converge to the mean as quickly as possible. It's not like cheating where they are going to be running after you as soon as you put in funny money.
Until you're suspected of laundering.
All I'm saying is that as soon as the Secret Service comes knocking (although maybe they only deal with counterfeiting, but [insert any federal agency]) with a suspicion that you, or that money, are involved, the casinos will fall over themselves to assist. They're not going to risk threats to their licenses.
> Don't drive in with a vehicle tied to you, wear a hat or basic disguse
You say this like casinos don't also employ systems, and people who are trained to look for hustlers, con artists, cheats who might be using disguises to enter.
You're right, though, absent any suspicion of you, they won't be looking for you.
It's very easy for banks to tell what merchants have had skimmers installed. Three or four fraud reports that all have a common merchant, and you're off and running, by seven or eight you can isolate pretty much any merchant.
But this also the fallacy of superiority, and "the intelligence of criminals". "Hah, stupid criminals, basic opsec, and you're fine." Were you carrying a cell phone? What's your gait as you walk look like? Etc., etc. "Oh, they won't go to that length"... for thirty million dollars cash stolen? They absolutely will. "Gait analysis is pseudoscience"? Maybe. Do you think that will stop efforts at parallel construction?
> Hell, you could find the lowest volatility game such as video poker that has a 99.5% hold and play it for a calculated amount to converge to the mean as quickly as possible. It's not like cheating where they are going to be running after you as soon as you put in funny money.
This would stand out like a red flag as soon as you did it a few times. Because who goes from video poker machine to video poker machine (even at different casinos - and many of the casinos can and do track and work with each other on surveillance to watch people moving between them) just to "play for a calculated amount to converge on the mean" and then cash out? No, they're not running after you, but when the po-po come knocking, you'll be wearing a neon sign above your head.
You would need a lot of planning and coordination on how it's spent and where it's spent to make it look legit. And have enough untainted income to live while you plan on how to spend the tainted stuff.
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-01-05/dun...
"Despite the daring robbery, what ended up solving it was not that exciting: An informant identified Hill as the person who rented a 14-foot U-Haul truck a day before the heist and had returned it a day later."
If I were the cops I'd check Google maps records to see who was looking at the satellite view of the area before the heist.
And it's not really that surprising imo. If you need to pay translators, contractors, bribe local officials or collaborators, assets, etc in a country that doesn't have a functioning banking system you need cash. And it's quicker to deliver some pallets with a C-130 and have guys dump it into duffel bags for whatever they need then to ask Congress nicely to set up bank transfers.
Even the USG says $6B+ was probably stolen.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/14047...