How do they track down the funds of people who commit financial crimes? Can’t they just hide the money?

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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

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

[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.

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