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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

#91

Post by metadat »

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.

And yet we also still have Daytime Saving Light Time.

What is wrong with us?

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

#92

Post by immibis »

SilasX wrote: post #56
rapnie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put money in the bank as legal income and pay your mortgage with that.

If the idea is to claim to be an escort that only accepts cash, and then report already-possessed cash as income, while also depositing into a bank, then that could have been phrased more clearly. As it stands, it says to actually be as escort and get more money that you have to launder. Plus, there has got to be more critical information -- left out of the comment -- on how to get such a scheme to work. I highly dou…

Plus, have fun convincing the authorities that you, a middle-aged man, are a high-class escort.

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

#93

Post by avidiax »

sschueller wrote: post #29
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. :)

Switzerland has 1000 Franc notes which is around 1140 USD. The central bank just decided that the next series will also include the 1k note although the EU doesn't want it (not that they really have a say) and some others are opposed to it as well. CHF 1000 is worth less than it ever was so the whole claim about it being used for crime is bullshit. People keep cash at home and safety deposit boxes. When we had negati…

My understanding is that Switzerland doesn't require you to declare cash of any amount when arriving.

€1.2million in a briefcase? No problem. 3kg of beef? Serious business.

CHF1000 notes would obviously be very convenient for moving large amounts of cash. If you are the sort of person trying to avoid the tax man's 20-40% taxation or the police's 100% taxation, why care about the CHF exchange rate?

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

#94

Post by hoppp »

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…

Slowly. Just pay for everything with cash. You can even buy a house with it. Real estates will accept it.

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

#95

Post by hoppp »

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.

I dont think people believe a man whore can make that sort of cash.

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

#96

Post by SilasX »

immibis wrote: post #92
SilasX wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the idea is to claim to be an escort that only accepts cash, and then report already-possessed cash as income, while also depositing into a bank, then that could have been phrased more clearly. As it stands, it says to actually be as escort and get more money that you have to launder. Plus, there has got to be more critical information -- left out of the comment -- on how to get such a scheme to work. I highly dou…

Plus, have fun convincing the authorities that you, a middle-aged man, are a high-class escort.

Haha there's an episode of Better Call Saul where nerdy, middle-aged Dan is noticed by the authorities as spending far more than he earns, and he explains it away as being an escort for rich fetishists who like seeing him sit on pies.

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

#97

Post by thaumasiotes »

defrost wrote: post #71
thaumasiotes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TV show seemed fairly incoherent in its treatment of money laundering. They're explicit about the mechanics, sort of: the idea is that Marty shows up in a rural area with a big bag of cash and he needs to make it appear legitimate - and he does this by taking ownership stakes in local businesses. So far so good. What you'd actually want, in that kind of setup, is to hand the active owner of the business you just…

The part they likely obfuscated for reasons of both brevity and not wishing to give a blueprint to wanna be criminals is also having a stake in the other businesses that invoice for the fake expenses. eg: Your (say) hotel | bar falsely inflates customer income and then spends the illegitimate cash (supposedly from customers that don't exist) on rennovation works and "new" carpets, plumbing, etc that don't exist - the…

That's wrong on two points.

First, they haven't obfuscated that; it's not present at all.

Second, your first step is that your hotel falsely inflates customer income. Then you follow up with some pointless additional steps. But if you can falsely inflate customer income, your job as a money launderer is already done. There are no additional steps. Spending revenue from your company on spurious invoices from another company is how you'd pay a bribe, not launder money.

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

#98

Post by thaumasiotes »

defrost wrote: post #78
krisoft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the scheme you are describing. If you have a hotel/bar and you falsely inflate the customer income then you are done. The previously illegitimate cash is now legitimate. Why would you want to complicate it more with the fake rennovation works? Especially when a hotel is so much easier. You can just put fake guests on the book. (Or report longer stays for your real guests.) With the renovation busin…

Without getting into the nitty gritty of trace back forensic accounting the added layer is akin to why people use proxy relay's in networking, diffusing cash outwards through layered shell companies makes the origin point(s) less visibly "hot". The ideal here is to have many injection points that can be inflated to a degree that doesn't quite raise suspicion .. and fewer collection filters (fake plumbing businesses,…

> The ideal here is to have many injection points that can be inflated to a degree that doesn't quite raise suspicion .. and fewer collection filters (fake plumbing businesses, etc) that each 'charge' several injection points for non existant work and pool money that's invoiced and trackable (from hotel to plumber).

You might note that this scheme doesn't involve you owning the hotel to any degree. You only need to own the plumbing business. That's the opposite of the situation on the show.

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

#99

Post by defrost »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #98
defrost wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of trace back forensic accounting the added layer is akin to why people use proxy relay's in networking, diffusing cash outwards through layered shell companies makes the origin point(s) less visibly "hot". The ideal here is to have many injection points that can be inflated to a degree that doesn't quite raise suspicion .. and fewer collection filters (fake plumbing businesses,…

> The ideal here is to have many injection points that can be inflated to a degree that doesn't quite raise suspicion .. and fewer collection filters (fake plumbing businesses, etc) that each 'charge' several injection points for non existant work and pool money that's invoiced and trackable (from hotel to plumber). You might note that this scheme doesn't involve you owning the hotel to any degree. You only need to o…

Control of the hotel is required - that's the cash business that fabricates fake customers and orders non existent repair and upgrade work.

The work is billed by fake (or better, partially fake) contractors who do no work but charge for time, labor and supplies.

It's a funnel with many cash casual customer locations inflate their intake and spend the excess on illusionary busywork "performed" by the next tier in the pyramid.

The entire paper tiger is controlled by the same entity .. who likely firewall and partition sections away (eg: the part that Marty did in Ozark (I read the synopsis) would be the cash flow in and a good number of lower level shell companies that he indirectly controlled) from each other and only are connected in a legal way to the upper layers that have documentation for their inputs from below.

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

#100

Post by defrost »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #97
defrost wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part they likely obfuscated for reasons of both brevity and not wishing to give a blueprint to wanna be criminals is also having a stake in the other businesses that invoice for the fake expenses. eg: Your (say) hotel | bar falsely inflates customer income and then spends the illegitimate cash (supposedly from customers that don't exist) on rennovation works and "new" carpets, plumbing, etc that don't exist - the…

That's wrong on two points. First, they haven't obfuscated that; it's not present at all. Second, your first step is that your hotel falsely inflates customer income. Then you follow up with some pointless additional steps. But if you can falsely inflate customer income, your job as a money launderer is already done. There are no additional steps. Spending revenue from your company on spurious invoices from another c…

What was the scale of total income per month to wash again?

You might want to dwell on the bookkeeping scale required to soak up that volume in a diffuse manner and then "legitimitely" consolidate that upwards.

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