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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

#41

Post by em-bee »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #33
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...

why? i never pay with card except for online purchases. i withdraw cash from an ATM. pretty much my whole withdrawal history on my bank account is ATM, rent and utilities and almost nothing else.

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

#42

Post by bagels »

sneak wrote: post #39
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…

Can you name the top three ways to convert it in to crypto? I don't think there are literally one million ways.

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

#43

Post by yieldcrv »

jknoepfler wrote: post #35
yieldcrv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

the answer was how to launder it, not how the fraud chief could launder it

but either way, the answer is yes, and yes, and no sarcasm

first, the investigation is never going to happen. but okay, lets play auditor

the auditor is like “wow you paid your taxes on time and properly, but I hate that you have made money, so lets check the receipts”

“hmmm, big cash, who are these clients?”

“What!? you didn't do KYC on a transaction of 20,000 euro cash, 1,000 times!? ah but the parties were in Luxembourg and Austria and Monaco where such cash transaction limits don't exist, well Monaco’s is 30,000 euro per transaction, sorry for the inconvenience, on behalf of the King of Spain I apologize for our hubris in thinking this had anything to do with our ridiculous AML regime”

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

#44

Post by bagels »

dylan604 wrote: post #19
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. :)

> Few people bother to pickup loose change anymore. My favorite head scratcher is the US penny. It would be so much easier on all involved if we rounded so everything was MOD5 friendly, and just eliminated the penny.

Canada did it.

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

#45

Post by nickff »

dylan604 wrote: post #19
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. :)

> Few people bother to pickup loose change anymore. My favorite head scratcher is the US penny. It would be so much easier on all involved if we rounded so everything was MOD5 friendly, and just eliminated the penny.

There has been a long-running campaign to get rid of the penny, to the extent that there's a "West Wing" episode that features the campaign. Ironically, Canada got rid of the penny in 2012-2013, after relatively little debate.

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

#46

Post by anonymousDan »

mattmanser wrote: post #22
pavlov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 500 euro bill hasn’t been produced since 2019. Apparently 25% of them were in circulation in Spain, despite the Spanish economy being only a fraction of the eurozone.

In the UK they heavily discourage even the £50 note (roughly €60/$63). We basically only use 5/10/20. Most shops won't take them and cash machines don't give them out. Which is pretty odd now given how high inflation got here for the last few years. Here's an article from 5 years ago saying that £50 notes were widely regarded as just used by criminals. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48993008

Yes I found this strange coming from Ireland where (during the Celtic Tiger at least!) the minimum I ever seemed to get from cash machines was 50 euros.

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

#47

Post by dumah »

jknoepfler wrote: post #35
yieldcrv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

“I ask: in case I ever get my hands on millions in cash, what is my plan for using it?”

The question wasn’t how the Spanish Anti-Fraud chief would launder.

A number of high-profile acts in the US have had managers convicted for this in connection with drug trafficking and other organized crime.

It’s absolutely plausible.

I’m not sure why you think a cursory audit would reveal that a cash receipt was forged.

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

#48

Post by SilasX »

netcan wrote: post #30
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…

Become a high class escort, where legal. Very high class. Accept only cash.

What is that responding to? The problem is how to safely spend/clean that much cash. You're describing how to accumulate cash, which makes the problem (in the parent comment) harder.

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

#49

Post by chairmanwow1 »

sneak wrote: post #36
CalRobert wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How on earth is requiring card payments discriminatory? Providing cash payment options is absolutely not free and implies extra risk on behalf of the business.

Refusing to take part in the banking system is not worth penalizing businesses for. Let the free market work.

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

#50

Post by dylan604 »

nickff wrote: post #45
dylan604 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Few people bother to pickup loose change anymore. My favorite head scratcher is the US penny. It would be so much easier on all involved if we rounded so everything was MOD5 friendly, and just eliminated the penny.

There has been a long-running campaign to get rid of the penny, to the extent that there's a "West Wing" episode that features the campaign. Ironically, Canada got rid of the penny in 2012-2013, after relatively little debate.

The West Wing episode is what I always think of when I think about the penny, and I almost referenced it myself
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