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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

#111

Post by tim333 »

ajxs wrote: post #70
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…

Here in Australia real estate transactions aren't covered by the national AML/CTF act. You can currently buy Australian real estate with millions of dollars stuffed into a duffle bag, and the realtor you gave it to is under no obligation to report who they got it from. You'd still need to declare your real estate assets for taxation purposes though. Our government has been so slow to fix this problem. There are new r…

In Spain that was basically the case till a decade or two ago. There was a big case "53 guilty in Spain corruption trial" which signalled a change https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/434384/53-guilty-in-Spa...

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

#112

Post by tim333 »

bagels wrote: post #42
sneak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In most countries I think you'd need to know someone with crypto who could use the cash and do a swap. The website localbitcoins that used to sort that is closed. Cambodia has cash to crypto dealers on the street if you are over that way.

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

#113

Post by tim333 »

pavlov wrote: post #14
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. :)

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.

I bough and sold a flat in Spain around 2004 and it was standard then for part of the payment to be in cash for tax avoidance purposes. This was all done officially through regular Spanish lawyers and estate agents.

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

#114

Post by newsclues »

crtasm wrote: post #52
newsclues wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade the entire wallet, that isn’t registered to anyone’s name? Seems easy enough to move money illicitly with crypto

So now at least two people - who I'm going to assume don't have 100% trust in each other - both have the private keys. How is this going to work?

Physical hardware key, so neither party knows it, but possession of it is the authentication.

Essentially crypto can be untraceable like cash or gold, it can be traded off the books, until you ‘launder’ it into someone’s name.

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

#115

Post by davidwritesbugs »

bigbones wrote: post #109
davidwritesbugs wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convicted ex-money launderer here. It's easy. Never dealt with €20M but the principle is scaleable, you smurf the money in ~€10k amounts through a network of trusted money mules. You buy a cash-only/mostly business like a car wash, take-away etc., rent half-a dozen shops and pump the cash through those, banks won't usually complain about cash coming in like this. €5k * 52 * {y stores}. There are entire areas of shops…

Money laundering conviction to tech worker sounds like a great story, I'm sure plenty more than just me would love to hear more about your background if you were willing to share.

They were sorta related, but I'm not saying more.

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

#116

Post by adtac »

davidwritesbugs wrote: post #102
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…

Convicted ex-money launderer here. It's easy. Never dealt with €20M but the principle is scaleable, you smurf the money in ~€10k amounts through a network of trusted money mules. You buy a cash-only/mostly business like a car wash, take-away etc., rent half-a dozen shops and pump the cash through those, banks won't usually complain about cash coming in like this. €5k * 52 * {y stores}. There are entire areas of shops…

In your opinion, what fraction of the small restaurants in a typical city are engaging in money laundering at this scale? And if weighted by volume, what fraction?

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

#117

Post by marcheradiuju »

thraxil wrote: post #110
ryandrake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of data is also a data point, and could be considered suspicious if most "normal law abiding" profiles produce data. Imagine you're the IRS and you see 1,000 people living in the same neighborhood, with comparable lifestyle profiles. 999 of them report similar incomes and have similar banking/investment profiles, but 1 of them reports drastically lower income and has little-to-no banking presence. Who are you go…

There's still quite a gap between "suspicious" and "probable cause". Just having a large amount of cash isn't by itself illegal. You could easily have enough cash to live on for quite a while having inherited it or earned it decades ago, etc.

There is a gap, but in my country, the AML regime is concerned with the bar of "reasonable to suspect" rather than "probable cause". This is the only way you could catch any laundering of any sophistication.

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

#118

Post by SilasX »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #105
SilasX wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Book fraudulent expenses for the hotel, making it look like it's spent a lot more money than it really has. No actual money changes hands anywhere. As I understand the show, they were buying overpriced things from cartel-owned enterprises, and that step was getting the money laundered to the client.

That would make sense, but I don't think it's ever mentioned. It is specifically mentioned that Marty books expenses that he hasn't actually incurred, notionally buying things that he never receives, which will stand up to an audit much more poorly than "buying overpriced things from cartel-owned enterprises" would.

There’s the scene where Marty takes rooms at the Blue Cat Lodge off the market for renovations, against Rachel’s objections that he wait for the off season, suggesting real stuff is actually being done to them. Then later she confronts him over paying ridiculous prices related for said renovations. (Where she also threatens to report him.) His cartel contact Del is mentioned as running a construction and remodeling business.

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

#119

Post by njtransit »

bagels wrote: post #103
washadjeffmad wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those "if you don't already know" topics. The feds cracked down on it earlier this year leading up to the election, but it's back.

Why can't anyone say what it is?

Because it’s just a provocative fiction in their minds.

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

#120

Post by chairmanwow1 »

krunck wrote: post #86
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reality is that cards can impose very high fees and businesses spread that cost out onto card AND cash payers. Card companies stipulate in the contract with the business that they CAN NOT charge extra for card transactions to cover the fees. That is why you see businesses offering discounts if you use cash. The Visa/Mastercard cartel has too much power.

This is a good argument against cards, but does not address GP's claim that card-only payments is discriminatory.
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