Wanted to ask as I saw SBF’s sentence included a penalty of 11 billion. If he doesn’t just fork it over and claims he doesn’t have it, what do they do next?
In: Economics
[Were exactly would one hide 11 billion dollars?](https://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/)
You can conceivably give your friend a few thousand dollars you scraped together. Maybe if you’re a drug lord with a lot of cash only transactions, you could put a million dollars in a suitcase and give it to someone without the government being able to trace it. Transferring 11 billion dollars without leaving some kind of paper trail is virtually impossible.
That kind of money can only be realistically transferred with banks. Banks will be required to report that activity if it looks suspicious, or if subpoenaed by the court.
It could be that with enough shell companies someone could heavily obscure where the money comes from and where it went, but the paper trail would still be there.
Every time you send or recive money at a bank both banks keep a record of that. So they start at somepoint where they think the money was at somepoint and follow the money. You arent going to have 11 billion in cash so its sitting in a bank somewhere. Now if you can get to the money is another questions.
It is hard to move large quantities of money without leaving a trail. As a Federal Bank Examiner I traced money from place to place until I figured out where and why it was going. People went to prison.
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