"Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. "
I'm not sure how turning stolen CCs into money is fundamentally different.
As far as I understand it, the process of moving money through complex transactions is to make it look like it came from somewhere legitimate and making it hard to trace back to something that isn't, by mixing it with legitimate funding in a hard-to-see way or by making it come from an otherwise legitimate source[1]. The goal of money laundering is being able to point at a legitimate source and being able to claim that's where the money came from and the complex transactions are meant to make it look plausible or at least hard to disprove.
[1] eg: if I pay a utility bill with illegitimate funds and overpay and then they refund me, that refund may be seen as laundered, because the utility company is legitimate, which is why they tend to have restrictions around such things -- I came across this example when I was doing anti-money laundering training when I did contract work for a bank recently, although admittedly I might not be remembering all the details correctly.
some argue above that there's no fraud involved, it is people simply doing manufactured spend, that makes little sense to me, as there are cheaper and simpler ways of doing manufactured spend (I've done it!). Heck, just buy the gift cards direct from amazon.
> Heck, just buy the gift cards direct from amazon.
Indeed, unless you're out to commit fraud or legal-definition-money-laundering, there seems little point in jumping through the hoops.
