I understand how money laundering works for smaller time criminals, buying some cash heavy business, mixing in the illegal cash with legit profits, etc… But how large scale criminals like major drug traffickers and such can launder 10s or 100s of millions I don’t understand. The conventional front business method seems like it would require an unreasonable amount of stores to handle that kind of volume.
In: Economics
One method:
You are the top drug kingpin and to date you have amassed $100mil in cash, all dirty. Take that money to a former Soviet republic and buy a freighter, but get the paperwork saying you bought two. Insure them both, but register them somewhere like Nigeria. The real boat really sinks and you get back clean money, and the fake boat is shipping fake goods and you pay the right people in corrupt countries to give you paperwork.
Now you have a real company doing fake work, but it needs money, so you take your drug profits and using banks in lower regulation countries filter that money as “payments” from customers to the bank accounts of the real company.
It’s basically the laundromat system but with extra steps.
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