undefined | Better HN

0 pointsjklein115y ago0 comments

Money laundering typically implies taking illegitimate sources of income and making them seem legitimate. In this case you could sell yourself $100 gift cards for $120. You wouldn’t even necessarily have to send yourself a gift card. You now have a legit source of income aka your eBay sellers account for illegal income.

0 comments

gruez5y ago

And the IRS is totally cool with you selling thousands of dollars of gift cards each week with no corresponding invoices on how you obtained them? Money laundering business tend to be cash based with high margins (eg. car wash), so you only need to buy $10 worth of supplies to launder $1000 worth of cash.

mywittyname5y ago

There's probably enough money on the books to acquire the "inventory". Especially if the "company" never pays out the profits.

I.e, a $10,000 outside "investment" allows you to sell 100, $100 gift cards for $120. Those profits get reinvested on the books, and now you have $12,000 to sell 120, $100 gift cards. Lather, rinse, repeat.

gruez5y ago

That's still sort of pointless because you need to generate a ton of turnover, which increase costs (credit card processing fees) and generally raises suspicion. With a carwash you might only need 1000 fake car washes at $60 each ($60,000 turnover) each to launder $50,000, but with the amazon gift card scheme you'll need to do $250,000 in turnover which is suspiciously high for a small business selling gift cards.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

gruez5y ago

mywittyname5y ago

There's probably enough money on the books to acquire the "inventory". Especially if the "company" never pays out the profits.

gruez5y ago

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse