I know money from drugs, robberies, stolen goods, etc is “dirty” but, how does anyone know it’s dirty? Why can’t you just spend your money?
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Watch the show Ozark, it is very good anyway but will teach you all you need to know. Breaking Bad is also good for this.
Because you need to spend it at some point, and when you do the tax man is going to be wondering where the hell all that extra money is coming from.
It’s how a lot of criminals get caught. If they can’t pin, say a murder or other capital crime, on a criminal or criminal enterprise the authorities follow the money and get you for tax evasion. It’s how al Capone went down. And sometimes that’s the only way they can convict.
Banks also have to report large deposits, so revenooers will come looking for a s’planation
Best explanation I’ve ever seen of it. I didn’t really understand it till I watched [this clip.](https://youtu.be/RhsUHDJ0BFM?t=83)
You’re also going to need a “[Danny](https://youtu.be/vHo0iISZGNg?t=26)”, but that’s advanced money laundering and we’ll be covering that next semester.
transactions of more than 10k are reportable.
living large without a source of income will eventually get some attention, theoretically.
Used to be you could have a lot of money in a caribbean bank and use a credit/debit card to eat out, go shopping, but they plugged that loop hole.
so laundering money is a way of making the funds appear to be from a legit source. Look at Tony Soprano, he had a no show job at the refuse company, but he still had to keep a low profile with public spending to not be obvious.
There was a story my friends told, some coke dealers in san fran opened a pizza place for walk in, to go only by the slice… but it was so popular they were making too much money to dump thousand more into. (on the flip side of that, a very tony men’s fashion store, Wilkes Bashford was the single most profitable retail shop in the country, way and above 2nd place by over twice as much. that set off red flags in multiple federal agencies…but surprise not only was it actual profit on sales they even found some minor under counting.)
A local friend was doing some sorta legit laundering. He was a contractor/builder. First he was setting some of the new pot shops in town. They had a problem, lots of cash but banks were shy of accepting it. He had no issues with taking a suitcase of cash, paying a lumber yard and various trades for the electrical, plumbing etc and he built some town houses, sold them, now the pot shop has income from a federally legit source.
Because no one is willing to go up against the IRS
If you don’t launder your money, it’s gonna look real suspicious if you make any large purchases.
A McDonald’s Part-Timer has no business owning a 5 story mansion with 36 Bugatti’s in the garage
What makes dirty money dirty, to begin with? Lack of legal paper trail.
How do you know money is dirty? You ask where it came from. For small amounts, its simply not worth the time to investigate. But as the amount increases, so does interest in understanding where it came from, and the number of laws to report the purchase.
This is in effect why money laundering exists at all. When you buy a car, a home, a business, anything of substantial value, it’s reported. It’s part of why you file taxes, and the IRS is one of the most funded parts of the government. If you report 20k income, but buy a new car in cash, someone notices.
Same thing for businesses, as a business you file taxes. The government knows how much you claim to have, they know how much similar businesses make, they know what businesses in your area make, if you suddenly start showing suspicious amounts, it gets flagged.
Money laundering is literally operating in that narrow gap that keeps you below suspicion. You need to pretend it came from something legit, that way when you go to spend it has the paper trail.
Saul explains this brilliantly as if Jesse was 5 in Breaking Bad:
A lot of misinformation here: you absolutely can bury it in the backyard and pull out a couple of benjamins each week. People who get caught with stolen money are usually caught either by trying to put it in a bank, visibly living above their means or are caught by fellow criminals selling them out. Example, the police here recently caught a couple who had in their possession dozens of ps5s, Gucci bags and expensive shoes. They were then linked to a robbery. The police patted themselves on the back to a job well done..subsequently it was revealed they had been named by another criminal with a more direct connection to the crime. No complex financial investigations, they got a warrant for the criminal link and found the goods. People get away with dirty money everyday
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