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Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

theguardian.com

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Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#31

Post by dgfitz »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

I’d probably “dig it up from my backyard because I’m a newly minted metal detector hobbyist” or something. If the bills were marked though I think your point is solid, it’s hard to make bad money clean.

Find some millionaire to pay you your own money for a job or something, give them 10%? I guess you still need to launder the money somehow.

Now I want to know how people can turn illegal cash millions into clean laundered money in 2024.

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#32

Post by [deleted] »

javajosh wrote: post #20

There needs to be a word for when someone does something bad in their own interest, and as a result the wider society degrades far more than the individual profited. Corrupt anti-corruption officials, yes, but also college professors issuing passing grades to customers, er I mean students, news networks that give in to the urge for sensationalism and ideologically driven attention, lawyers who escalate conflict for p…

[deleted]

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#33

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

I'd be happy just paying groceries with cash for the rest of my life tbh. Although I can imagine a lack of grocery shopping on anyone's bank account would be suspicious. But moving to a country where nobody knows you / nobody cares would be an option too. Of course, then you get the challenge of moving 20 million in cash abroad...

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#34

Post by chucksmash »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

Local dealerships will take cash but if you show up with enough of it (even a very large down payment amount), it's not uncommon that the person you try to give it to isn't sure they are allowed to accept it and will disappear to run it up the chain to get permission.

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#35

Post by jknoepfler »

yieldcrv wrote: post #24
ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

Very easy to launder 20M Be a promotor or promotion company, sell VIP tables at big event or music festival for 20,000 euro each, 9 out of 10 clients don’t show up (because they don’t exist and you made them up) Do it all summer, our economy is big enough to support this Your money is now clean from selling VIP tables Deposit cash, pay taxes, move on

So the suggestion is that uh... the former fraud chief of the Spanish police... become a highly connected event promotor... with access to high profile clients who will actually spend 20,000 euro for a concert ticket... which we inexplicably demand and receive IN CASH... in exchange for VIP tables at high profile events that we magically have access to... while supplying 20,000 worth of services to the one VIP that did attend... and then repeat this how many times? While forging receipts for cash payments, which will sustain scrutiny from a cursory audit?

Is there a missing /s? Like this is neither easy nor a plausible way to get away with financial fraud.

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#36

Post by sneak »

CalRobert wrote: post #25
metadat wrote: post #11

I'd forgotten Europe has €500 notes, whereas in the US everyone now gets to deal with $100 bill spam. Few people bother to pickup loose change anymore. What's the long-term plan here? Perhaps it's to add maximum physical friction to moving larger amounts of fiat than you can spend in a single visit to Costco on a food run for your family of of 4. :)

I don't like it, but I think the long term plan is to eliminate paper money, and with it privacy. I live in the Netherlands and you can really live 100% cash-free here. A lot of places are card-only, even.

I refuse to patronize places that are card only. Not everyone can use electronic payments.

New York and some other cities actually made it illegal, as it's discriminatory.

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#37

Post by toast0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

I dunno about Eurozone, but I bought some land from my US county recently, and they told me I could provide a cashier's check or come with about $50,000 in cash. I went ahead and paid my bank fees to get a cashier's check.

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#38

Post by jknoepfler »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

The articles notes he laundered a portion of the money through crypto and business fraud.

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#39

Post by sneak »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

I know lots of people who live very nice lives ($300-750k/year spend) using nothing but cash and never showing ID.

There are a million ways to convert it to crypto, and a million ways to convert crypto to many of the other things one might want to use: gift cards, airline miles, etc.

Same goes for gold. There are lots of shops in many countries that will buy gold for cash. Many countries still have hotels that accept cash.

You can pay for a surprising amount of things in cash. One friend of mine simply has a rich buddy buy his cars and insurance, and he gives him paper cash each year for the sum of payments+insurance.

Many landlords are happy to accept cash, especially if you are willing to pay a year in advance.

Why do you think someone with that much money would be driving a car that's titled and plated in their own name?

Re: Spanish police arrest ex-fraud chief after €20M found in walls of his house

#40

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

How does one even expect to use €20M of physical paper cash? You're going to get scrutiny from the government and/or financial institutions if you try to deposit it into a bank. I guess you'd "launder" it somehow, but does that even work anymore? Major purchases with cash put a giant government bullseye on your back these days. That is if you could actually make those purchases. I'd imagine most major purchases that…

[deleted]
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