It's merely a tool that can be used for good and bad like damn near everything. You think all of those people on Kiva are just struggling third world workers looking for a micro loan of 10 bucks?

Nope, just neckbeard Alaskans that are looking for their next drink.

What an odd comment.

Hahaha neckbeard!!! I'm dying

wrong bitcoin and crypto- currency is for laundering and terrorists goFund me is for people who fuck up in life and need to be bailed out

Definitely has been used that way

It was a plot device in Breaking Bad.

https://twitter.com/jackposobiec/status/1043882286872236036

I'd buy that it can be used easily for that purpose, but do you have proof? I imagine the good old fashion cash business eat of doing it is still easier than having thousands of traceable credit cards and what not being used.

Prepaid credit cards can be purchased with cash just about anywhere now.

You have to register the cards before using them online.

Plus, the limit would have to be hella high for what this could be alluding too.

Not if you have a stack of cards.

Having a stack won't mean jack when the shit starts popping up red flags...

It’s not hard to discretely register them to aliases in an untraceable manner. I assure you people that are pulling this stuff aren’t stupid about it.

My bank lets you buy prepaid cards without registering them at all

A lot of things can be used for money laundering...

Can someone please elaborate on just how it can be used for money laundering? [Serious]

Lets say you are a person with dirty money, (money you got from selling drugs, robbing, being a hitman, whatever) money you can't just deposit in the bank, without the IRS/Feds becoming suspicious.

So you make a I gofundme that says something like "donate so i can travel the world!/buy a new car/pay my student loans/whatever"

And then you make a bunch of "donations" with that dirty money to your own gofundme as anonymous or fake people.

Then you collect your clean money, if the Feds ask questions you can just say "🤷 the money was donated to me"

That's how you move 800k+ in a few weeks of congressional hearings...

Ok, but how do you get the money to gofundme? They don't take cash.

15 million Americans are victims of ID theft every year. IDK how many world wide. I'm guess it's a lot. Lets crunch some numbers.

There are 325 million US citizens. 15 million is 5%. Europe's population is 740 million. 5% of that is 37 million. So a rough guesstimate is 52 million people are year are victims of ID theft?

Why is this important? Because once a person's identity is compromised financial accounts can be opened in their names. And if done carefully those identities can be compromised for years without the person who that identity belongs to knowing they've been compromised.

If money laundering through gofundme sites is your business, that's one way you're going to do it.

The process certainly makes sense. It just seems to me like the perpetrators of this type of laundering would be small timers. Banks cater to the big guys.

This sounds perfect for someone who has a small illegal operation and needs to launder small amounts of cash every month or so. That's a lot of risk for a small timer. I'm in Europe, so I guess it makes a lot less sense here where banks are very involved in what you're doing.

Large operations, at least here, are led by the banks themselves.

That's because you're looking at this from the perspective of the magic bullet; a single convenient solution to the problem of how to launder money.

There is no single solution. A multitude of solutions are employed. If I want to launder half a billion dollars I don't do it all through a car wash.

Yeah, I can see your point. Of course it seems to me too far fetched, but then again, I've never needed to launder money. LOL

Another way to look at it is if I make $5 in illicit activities that cost me $0.50 to make and I can't utilize, touch or claim it without admitting guilt of a crime then if I have to spend $3 of it to keep $2 I still come out $1.50 richer.

I mean, that's the way people look at it.

Buy those $500 prepaid credit cards and use those.

I'm sure there are other ways I'm not thinking of too.

it's only anonymous to the outside viewer. even anonymous donations have an identity tied to them that the page manager can see.

Ok

It’s difficult to use gofundme for laundering, since all the transactions are done electronically you can’t exactly hide where they came from and can’t exactly dump 100k into the banking system with no explanation to fund said gofundme and not expect everyone to see what’s going on. Banks get to keep some of the funds seized from launderers so they have an incentive to be on the lookout..

The trick is to turn physical suitcases of cash into money in the bank without raising eyebrows. All deposits and withdrawals over 10k MUST be reported. All deposits and withdrawals above 5 are usually reported.

Now tattoo parlours ( 4 artists who charge 250-500 per hour can wash 10k a day easy ), as long as the parlour opens at 3pm and closes at 3am then nobody is going to sit there and count people coming in and out.

Cash bars ( if a bar is busy it’s impossible to tell if an extra 10/20k has appeared in the til overnight )

Strip clubs ( same premise as bars )

Furniture stores with massively marked up prices. ( 10k as the sticker price for a bed, someone walks in being hesitant, owner comes in gives them 95% off if bought with cash then stuffs 9500 in the til themselves )

Foreign property, buy land and build a house for 200k “clean” cash spend another 200k dirty cash improving the quality of the build ( better materials and fittings, etc. ) sell for 500 to 600, walk away with money washed..

Casinos, putting 10k on the table raises flags, putting 4k though is kinda standard. Walking in putting 1k on red every day, if you win put 4k on black, if you looose just walk away, if you win fill out the forms and have the casino cut you a cheque for 8k. Repeat every day ( you will only have a loss of under 3% in the long term )

This guy launders

Pro tip, one cannot launder money with a pizza shop because the tax man knows he can count boxes to guess income...

But if the pizza shop sells many other kinds of food especially things such as burgers where ingredients and packaging can be purchased anywhere then one can argue with the tax man, ( well it turns out that my quarter pounders are all 15 percent light, and sometimes I buy 2000 bags from the grocery store but don’t lodge the receipts because I also bought condoms and booze for myself.

No I do not launder, I just now how to do so in concrete actual ways, because it’s not rocket surgery.

Am rocket surgeon. Can confirm

We all know you got fired when that rocket got the wrong kidney bro.

You say wrong kidney, I say right kidney.

I’m into brain science, I got your back!

Astro neurology is for lovers

Buy extra boxes, use as fuel in pizza oven.

“Why does this flavor taste so strongly cardboard?”

Asks the Domino's customer...

Who is counting boxes at pizza shops, and if anyone is actually doing that (which I doubt) why not order extra boxes?

One weird trick the IRS hates!

That’s the thing.

So pizza boxes can only be purchased from a small number of companies, you can’t just walk into a Walmart and get plain or printed pizza boxes, like you can meat flour or cheese.

All the companies which manufacture pizza boxes require payment to be either electronic or in cheque and will give you ( as well as keep a copy of your receipt. )

So if you are being audited and let’s say you are buying 10,000 boxes a week, and selling pizzas for 5 bucks each. If your books say you have 70,000 in sales then the auditor will start applying a lot of pressure to try to figure out where the extra 20k came from

So just buy a bunch of boxes with no intention of actually filling them. Claim a bunch of walk-in cash sales.

Or just combine the pizza shop with a mattress store and piggyback on existing money-laundering infrastructure.

Ever tried to dispose of large numbers of pizza boxes ?

The mob already owns the waste & recycling industry. Work out a deal. When life gives you pizza boxes make... lemon... paste?

Pizza boxes burn just as well as any other type of box.

Can’t the pizza place just buy boxes and throw them in the trash?

That guy taught me how to launder, now u just need a briefcase of cash. If you'd like to help please visit my gofundme page...

Tanning salons and taxi companies were the big ones where I come from.

The place I live now had a fitness supplement store that I think was probably a drug front. Not much stock, never seen anyone actually go in there, was only ever me. Still, it was open for years.

Tanning salons are excellent, though taxis can vary a lot depending on where you are, some places are very strict with meter logging.

Yeah, the supplement place is a drug front, I mean a 2kg jar of protein is the perfect place to hide a kilo of powder.

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/594b5q/the-24-hour-carlton-flower-shop-everyone-thought-was-a-drug-front-was-a-drug-front

In front of my house there is a chinese restaurant that I'm sure is a front for something. I smoke in the balcony so I have a vantage point to see who enters and leaves the premises. And its been practically no one for years.

Either we live in the same place or this is common

Found Marty Byrde

I don’t know who that is.

Ozark on Netflix, it's a doozy

Also cafes. No ones watching how many coffees and sandwiches you sell.

Another good one. Pay people a premium for their winning gambling tickets - ie: l have $100k of cash l want to put in my bank account though l don't have a good reason how the $100k fell into my lap. When someone has a winning ticket from gambling (horse races etc) I offer them a 20% premium on the actual earnings (ticket pays $100, l offer $120). I have now legitimised my cash! As it was from gambling!

Didn't Walter White use GoFundMe for money laundering?

His son did on this show

Saul Goodman did for Walter

The Ozarks?

Haven’t seen it, there’s too much good tv on at the moment ( better call Saul, Mayans, lodge 49. ) for me to take on a streaming show.

You can buy a prepaid Visa a d use a VPN to launder money through GoFundMe

Ever used a prepaid visa ?

They ask all sorts of personal questions including your social, if the location is too far away from where the visa is registered they to fraud lock it until you physically ring them up from the phone number you provided when activating it.

Ever launder money? Cause you explicitly said you didn't. So what would you know.

A guy came into my work and got us to quote him about $10k of lumber and then he bought it. It was a really weird bulk order, 100 of one size of board and 100 of another. Huge boards too. Never seen an order like it and you could about 25 decks with this much lumber. He didn't seem like a contractor type either...

Anyway he paid in cash, he never picked it up or arranged for delivery, and then eventually returned it. How likely do you think it is that he was trying to clean up that cash? Maybe keeping the receipt to build a clean paper trail? It definitely seemed weird.

Fun part is your employer might actually get in trouble for this if audited.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/form-8300-and-reporting-cash-payments-of-over-10000

I'm in Canada but I think the 10000 law is the same anyhow. And now that I think of it, it might have been few hundered short of 10000.

Laws are pretty much uniform all around the world, I had to fill out similar forms in australlia when buying 11k worth of plane tickets.

It definitely seemed like meth.

Or a mix'n'match of prescription drugs.

Or he realized he was going to need a bigger yard. Did he buy any dirt?

Can you explain the 3% loss?

When betting red/black in roulette you only have a 48.5(ish) chance of getting red or black, and a small chance of getting 0/00

Welcome to the current year!

For small time crooks. The big money gets laundered through fine art and expensive auctions (antiques, cars)

This

Very well could be, I have my suspicions about certain charities as well.......what better way to stockpile money than to convince a massive amount of people to willingly give away their hard earned money, by making them think they are helping a “good cause”? Hell, all you’ve got to do is “donate” said funds back to the person who set up the charity, maybe under a false name, or a family member.......it’s really fairly simple to do actually.

In my opinion, it's ridiculous to think GoFund Me isnt used for money laundering, at least to a degree.

I could be wrong, I have no idea what security measures the service has

Do you have any idea how silly this sounds?

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7g9fbo/money_laundering_101/

In the car business we have extra training for preventing money laundering as high value items like cars tend to be used as such. They often will try to skirt the system by making cash purchases under the federal reporting limit. I don’t think gofundme could really handle the volume of cash that would be necessary for laundering tbh.

Use a botnet as vpns. A bank/online service isnt going to flag a small donation. Thousands of small donations from different people wont trigger any suspicion. Load up a few thousand in prepaid credit/debit cards. Link them to separate Paypal accounts. Pay via vpn, proxies. Its pretty simple..

A GoFundMe style internet fundraiser was used for money laundering on Breaking Bad.

This is what is wrong with this sub.

First: make statement purporting to be fact. Second: admit that no research or investigation wade undertaken.

A conspiracy is not a thinky-thought that your once had. Please learn to think, critically reflect, then speak.

Bit coin

This was used on Breaking Bad with Walt Jr's website.

You send out a virus that either outright hacks or discretely opens a back door. The "master" sends $1 to the "zombie" and the zombie donates it through GoFund Me. Have this virus on 10,000 computers each dropping $1/week to 100 different campaigns could move a lot of money.

Since we are on the topic, isn't "Modern Art" the current most popular manner or washing funds? You buy 3 Million Dollars worth of Contraband from Mr. X, along with a painting which consist of white canvas and 3 green dots. Mr. X The "Artist" pays the tax man their share, and deposits their now "Clean" money.

Or everything in the art world is legit, and I just don't get Modern "Art".

...that explains why my April Fool's GoFundMe for a money laundromat did oddly well.

The process certainly makes sense. It just seems to me like the perpetrators of this type of laundering would be small timers. Banks cater to the big guys.

This sounds perfect for someone who has a small illegal operation and needs to launder small amounts of cash every month or so. That's a lot of risk for a small timer. I'm in Europe, so I guess it makes a lot less sense here where banks are very involved in what you're doing.

Large operations, at least here, are led by the banks themselves.

This

When betting red/black in roulette you only have a 48.5(ish) chance of getting red or black, and a small chance of getting 0/00

I'm in Canada but I think the 10000 law is the same anyhow. And now that I think of it, it might have been few hundered short of 10000.