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How one of the world's major money laundering networks operates

bookofjoe 13 hours ago | next [–] https://archive.ph/1f2mL I think a lot. 486sx33 7 hours ago | prev | next [–] Unfortunately, outlawing cash transactions really isn’t good for people. I know the cause sounds good here but the method isn’t wonderful. weitendorf 5 hours ago | parent | next [–] I don’t understand why […]

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How one of the world's major money laundering networks operates

I think a lot.

Unfortunately, outlawing cash transactions really isn’t good for people. I know the cause sounds good here but the method isn’t wonderful.


I don’t understand why digital financial transactions are so heavily regulated and scrutinized while cash still exists. Governments have even basically soft-killed Monero which is pretty much the only way to get actual cash-like semantics digitally. Yet cash is still given preferential treatment over traditional digital payments.

Very simple.
1. Orders of magnitude. Digital transactions can be billions in single transaction. While making large cash transactions in cumbersome and unrealistic.
2. Because they can. Regulating digital transactions is simple. Regulating cash – next to impossible.


Cash is grandfathered but (in the US) it’s really essential for some old people who don’t use tech, homeless people, anti-government survivalists, and “mark of the beast” conspiracy theorists. (A similar constituency is blocking federal IDs and digital IDs.) You wouldn’t think that’s a powerful bloc but apparently it is.


That is fair and I thought of that “old people might legitimately need it” case too when writing my other comment. But even that might only be the case for another 10-20 years.

You generally cannot open a bank account without address. It is trivial for criminals to do with darks. Last time I was between addresses no one would open me an account even with a US passport as it failed kyc with no address.

Yeah, I’m inclined to agree with this. The fact that Sweden, Japan, and China went 99% cashless shows that it can be done.

Japan did not, a few things even require it.


Maybe India more than Japan


A lot of drugs are cash only. Even marijuana in legal states like Michigan.


It is not just for old people, homeless people, etc. I do not have a credit card or a smartphone and I always pay in cash.


You’re a survivalist (whether you admit it or not).


People get scammed out of cash just as easily. See “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger. I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam.” https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-w…

Cash is being made more and more inconvenient over time, presumably to push more people towards monitored transactions.


Cash transactions are vital under authoritarian regimes that would otherwise have potentially total surveillance and control over financial transactions, or for people who may be unable to open a bank account for whatever reason.


In most developed countries cash is too inconvenient for regular people to bother with it anymore except when they have to – it is just simpler to pay for things digitally or with a card. But even “free” governments already have total surveillance over digital transactions. So as the remaining legitimate uses (and users, since I think most regular people who would be legitimately harmed by going cashless are very very elderly people who would struggle to adapt) for cash die off pretty much the only remaining reason to use cash is to commit crime – the vast majority of which is tax fraud, which effectively harms every citizen who isn’t committing tax fraud.

>Basically, eventually cash will basically become the “crime mode” for its respective currency. I don’t see why it makes sense to continue to allow cash at that point.

This doesn’t really detail any money laundering scheme. This is just how to access scammed money. Simply cashing out a large deposit of tether isn’t laundering money. You still need a legitimate way to explain how you earned the money for it to be considered laundered.

Where I live, there is a chain of “vacuum repair” shops. There are like 4 – 5 of them in an area no bigger than 60 square miles. I’ve always assumed they were a money laundering front. Are that many people repairing their vacuums?


Doubtful, yet they’d probably rebuild your vacuum if you brought it to them.

Some of it might be a competition thing, where clustering is a Nash Equilibrium to prevent the other guy from taking unclaimed territory/customers.

So… I started scimming through the artcle, and they basically convert the money to cryptocurrency? Don’t know if the article really contained anything other interesting details.


The interesting bits are before that happens. You need money mules, you need brokers to find the mules for you, you need escrow companies to stop the brokers from running away with your money, etc.


So much work. makes me wonder why not just earn it legit. It’s like cheaters in school who use AI software and other tools. It would be less work to just study. I guess it does work or esle it the scams would not persist.


Not sure if I fully agree on that. Using AI as a tool can usually reduce the total time it takes to complete an assignment or project by like 50%, not to mention it also reduces the amount of time spent pulling your hair out feeling stuck by like 80-90%. Of course, you lose out on most of the learning experience but it’s not like the old days of smuggling in rolled up papers or writing inside a water bottle — “cheating” (if you can even call it that) has basically never been easier.


That’s why companies have leetcode interviews.


That’s great! Now try getting hired with nothing but a degree when everyone knows half the class did this shit.


> So much work. makes me wonder why not just earn it legit.

A lot of the people running these scams have been kidnapped and moved to lawless zones forced to scam people. They don’t really have the choice to do legitimate work.


> It’s like cheaters in school who use AI software and other tools. It would be less work to just study.

Grok makes a better, more coherent text when asked to explain the steps involved in money laundering based on this article.


This is the plot of the movie, ‘The Beekeeper’.


Only partially. This is Scambodia. The plot of The Beekeeper is US-based, and the head of that operation is the son of the President (or candidate? can’t remember exactly anymore).


Seems like the easiest way to launder or bribe someone is still crypto. Might not be an investor’s paradise, but certainly a launderer’s.


or you can just bring a bag of cash to buy a condo in NYC https://theweek.com/articles/736313/how-foreign-investors-la…


The Brazilian media reported that the Bolsonaro family bought at least 51 properties with cash.

At least Germany recently changed their laws (initiated by the Green Party) that prevents buying real estate with cash. But this has been a money laundering practice for the mob for decades.


Australia just implemented laws where you have to show where the money came from when buying property, gold, and some other stuff with cash.


Are you referring to Australia’s AML/CTF Tranche 2 reforms? If so, these actually come into effect on 1 July 2026.


You’re forced to take out a bank loan in Germany if you want to buy property?


Nope, but you can’t buy property with literal cash, crypto, or precious metals anymore. In Germany people use SEPA payments as the primary means to transfer money, and that is the intended way to handle big transactions.


I believe there are numerous ways to transfer money without using physical bills; disallowing cash for large purchases doesn’t imply a loan. Personal or certified Cheque, money order , wire, interac / email transfer are some of the options, I’m sure there are others.

Paying for things in cash is banned over a certain price (usually $10k) in some parts of the world.


Vancouver is also more than happy to help you out https://www.sanctions.io/blog/the-vancouver-model-of-money-l…


There have been changes in recent years that complicate this model because you are now required to register the beneficial (meaning the de facto, not de jure) owner of real property in BC. There was also an investigation into the casinos which culminated in the Dirty Money report [0]. Quite a few reforms came about as a result of that, chief among them that a source of funds declaration is required on buy-ins of $10,000 or more and mandatory identity verification is required on transactions of $3,000 or more.

Spreading misinformation hurts everyone.


I wonder how much of these kinds of issues that we are told are “complex” and “multi-faceted”, “no easy solution” etc could be significantly reduced if there was actual political will to do so.

The political will has to be globally coordinated and needs to mandate a basic standard of living for all.

Groan…..


If we had political will we could just kill everyone who disagrees.

The politicians and the police get their cut of the money, and the victims are in other countries. There’s a reason the scam industry operates out of poor places with dysfunctional government, like Myanmar and Cambodia.


Yep, the gambling / casino industry is largely responsible. And they have their roots deep in the political system.


There seems to be political will to ignore it

Agreed. It seems like billionaires are buying more and more of our means of communication. Makes it easier to control the narrative.


Buy crypto, convert it to Monero, transfer it around a bit, convert it to your destination currency. Done.


This is missing the most important step though, which is to actually launder the money. Concealing the source of the money is only half of the ordeal, making the money seem legitimate is the second, usually considerably trickier bit. If you suddenly receive $100k from a crypto exchange with no trace of how you came to own it, your bank is going to ask you some questions.


If it’s a one-time $100k you can just slowly withdraw small portions of it and probably nobody would notice. It depends how much you’re trying to launder.


The F.B.I., China’s Ministry of Public Security, Interpol and others have tried to combat scammers, who often lurk on social media and dating apps, luring people into bogus financial schemes or other ruses.

Where does your knowledge come from? With respect, how do we know you’re right and they’re wrong and not vice-versa? They spent a lot of time on it, went to Southeast Asia to see it for themselves, have editors, etc. That doesn’t mean they get it right always, but neither do people on HN.


you realise that something’s not just clickbait because you don’t understand it? Huione is a behemoth in the laundering-sphere; it’s intrinsically linked to Cambodian scam compounds, as well as handling every single step of the wash process in-house. These guys don’t just receive the stolen funds, but they link international clients with mules across literally thousands of Telegram groups before converting said currency into the Hui-one coin and then onto Tether. All of this is done within Hui-one’s infrastructure.

I have seen a few confirmations of this.


The article makes it pretty clear that China is the jurisdiction that is the hardest to evade.


> Interpol hardly does anything by comparison and have much less doggedness (it was the US who found Bin Laden for example). It typically helps the US, not actually initiates the investigation. At best its like a sidekick.

Finance

Jake Paul has made an incredible amount of money from his boxing career ahead of Julio …

Jake Paul has made himself richer than he ever expected after moving from the world of YouTube into professional boxing. The YouTuber is set to take on Julio Cesar Chavez Jr on June 28 in his toughest test yet. Jake Paul’s planned fight with Canelo Alvarez fell apart, but his opponent was replaced by Chavez […]

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Jake Paul has made an incredible amount of money from his boxing career ahead of Julio ...

Jake Paul has made himself richer than he ever expected after moving from the world of YouTube into professional boxing.

The YouTuber is set to take on Julio Cesar Chavez Jr on June 28 in his toughest test yet.

Jake Paul’s planned fight with Canelo Alvarez fell apart, but his opponent was replaced by Chavez Jr in the main event of a blockbuster card in California.

This could be one of Paul’s biggest paydays yet, adding to the incredible amount of money he’s made in his career so far.

Jake Paul v Mike Tyson - Weigh-Ins
Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images

Jake Paul has made over $60 million since starting his boxing career

Paul has made an astronomical amount of money since beginning his career in professional boxing.

The former Disney Channel actor made his boxing debut in 2020. Paul beat fellow YouTuber AnEsonGib in a quick and easy knockout victory, which earned him a reported payday of $1 million.

His pay for the next few fights varied, going as low as $600,000 for his win over Nate Robinson and over $3 million for his defeat to Tommy Fury in 2023.

# Opponent Date Reported Base Purse Notes
1 AnEsonGib Jan 30, 2020 $1 million Pro debut
2 Nate Robinson Nov 28, 2020 $600,000 Undercard of Tyson vs. Roy Jones Jr.
3 Ben Askren Apr 17, 2021 $690,000 500k PPV buys
4 Tyron Woodley I Aug 29, 2021 $2 million 500k PPV buys
5 Tyron Woodley II Dec 18, 2021 $2 million Short-notice rematch
6 Anderson Silva Oct 29, 2022 $1.5 million 200–300k PPV buys
7 Tommy Fury Feb 26, 2023 $3.2 million $8.6M total incl. PPV revenue share
8 Nate Diaz Aug 5, 2023 $1.6 million 450k PPV buys, reported $27 million in revenue
9 Andre August Dec 15, 2023 $2.9 million Fought on DAZN card
10 Ryan Bourland Mar 2, 2024 $2.9 million Light heavyweight bout
11 Mike Perry Jul 20, 2024 $3 million 67k PPV buys
12 Mike Tyson (TBD) Nov 15, 2024 $40 million (claimed) Paul’s “biggest payday” to date

Paul’s paydays stayed around the $2 million to $3 million mark until his blockbuster fight with Mike Tyson shattered his records for their November 2024 bout.

Despite claims that Paul was paid up to $90 million for the bout, he claimed in the months before the fight that he earned a more modest $40 million for beating the former World Heavyweight champion.

“I’m here to make $40 million and knock out a legend,” Paul told a press conference in the build-up to the fight.

Looking at the reported figures, Paul has earned an estimated $61.4 million from his boxing career alone. This will increase with the Chavez Jr fight, although it is missing the split of the pay-per-view revenue he will have earned.

That will add even more millions to his purse, making Paul one of the most successful boxers in recent years.

Jake Paul is unlikely to make more on his next bout than the Mike Tyson fight

While Paul’s upcoming bout with Chavez Jr is garnering huge interest, he is unlikely to make as much money on the fight as his last one.

The bout with Tyson in November 2024 earned Paul a reported $40 million. However, the interest in that bout was incredible, which was helped by it being broadcast live on Netflix instead of pay-per-view.

This earned Paul a huge fee, although that made up for a lack of PPV revenue share.

The bout with Chavez Jr is being broadcast on DAZN, which means he will only earn a huge fee if the fight sells a lot of pay-per-views.

While his purse for fighting will be in the millions, it would need to be a massively popular bout to hit the $40 million mark to take his total fight earnings to over $100 million for his career.

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Finance

Group attacks Stoney for taking money from donors who give to other Democrats

by Brandon Jarvis The Working Families Party is criticizing Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Levar Stoney for the donations he has received for his campaign with a digital ad. However, donors that WFP cited in its criticism of Stoney also give substantial amounts to a long list of Democrats. “These donors have funded Republicans who advance Trump’s agenda, […]

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Group attacks Stoney for taking money from donors who give to other Democrats

by Brandon Jarvis

The Working Families Party is criticizing Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Levar Stoney for the donations he has received for his campaign with a digital ad. However, donors that WFP cited in its criticism of Stoney also give substantial amounts to a long list of Democrats.

“These donors have funded Republicans who advance Trump’s agenda, like Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares, and even a Republican candidate for the same position,” WFP said in a news release.

One of the donors referenced by WFP is Thomas McInerney. According to VPAP, McInerney has given $22,500 to Republicans in 2025. However, he has given $138,500 to Democrats, a list that includes gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger, both Democratic candidates for attorney general, and Stoney’s opponent for the lieutenant governor nomination, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi.

Historically, McInerney has donated more than $1 million to Democratic candidates, compared to $425,000 to Republican candidates.

WFP also cited Pace-O-Matic, the group pushing for the legalization of skill games in Virginia, which has given Stoney $25,000 this year. The company has also given $10,000 to Stoney’s opponent, state Sen. Aaron Rouse, and to Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones.

In 2025, Pace-O-Matic has given $142,500 to Democratic candidates and $15,000 to Republican candidates.

Another donor cited by WFP is Basim Mansour, who has donated more than $174,000 to Democrats and $122,000 to Republican candidates. He also donated to Pat Herrity, who was seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor before dropping out for health reasons.

This is not the first attack Stoney has faced this cycle from an outside entity. In May, a conservative organization purchased a billboard in Richmond blaming him for the city’s January water crisis.

“Let’s be real — when the far right and far left are both attacking you, you’re probably doing something right,” Stoney said in a statement to Virginia Scope. “I don’t play politics to please the extremes. I will continue to run my positive campaign to ensure every Virginian gets a fair shot, no matter who they are or where they live.”

WFP told Virginia Scope that they are not endorsing a candidate in the lieutenant governor race.

When asked if they plan to attack other Democrats in these races who accepted money from these donors, like Spanberger, WFP said they are only focused on the lieutenant governor primary.

View the ad below:


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'Changed my life'

‘Changed my life’: Woman raises money for high school senior who worked Burger King shift the day of graduation High school senior Mykale Baker went to his high school graduation, and after, decided to get some food for his family at Burger King, which is where he works. After seeing how short staffed they were, […]

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'Changed my life'

‘Changed my life’: Woman raises money for high school senior who worked Burger King shift the day of graduation

High school senior Mykale Baker went to his high school graduation, and after, decided to get some food for his family at Burger King, which is where he works. After seeing how short staffed they were, he decided to help out the team. Maria Mendoza saw him at work and started a GoFundMe page for him, which has raised almost $200 thousand dollars towards his college fund.

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32 Ways To Save Money Right Now

6

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32 Ways To Save Money Right Now

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Finance

JB Pritzker

David Weigel: Do you want to see New Hampshire vote first in 2024? JB Pritzker: To be clear, I’m not here about any of that. We just finished a presidential election. Could we take a breath and talk about the congressional elections coming up in 2026? We need Chris Pappas to win for the United […]

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JB Pritzker

David Weigel: Do you want to see New Hampshire vote first in 2024?

JB Pritzker: To be clear, I’m not here about any of that. We just finished a presidential election. Could we take a breath and talk about the congressional elections coming up in 2026? We need Chris Pappas to win for the United States Senate.

I think New Hampshire is a good early primary state — just as an observer of presidential elections, for a lot of years. I think it needs to be paired with other states, with other demographics. That’s absolutely possible now that we’ve got South Carolina, Nevada on the calendar. But New Hampshire is a really fascinating place, it’s a small place, and it allows people to come, when they run for president, and not need a lot of money, and be able to meet a lot of voters.

What role are you taking to help Democrats in 2026? How much of it is financial support?

I’ve traveled around the country to try to help Democrats everywhere. It’s been a personal endeavor, not so much about the financing of campaigns as it is about making sure that we’re pressing forward on the message of what we stand for. Right? We’re a party that stands up for working families, and the candidates that we support are the quality candidates that people want to serve in Congress.

I’ve also supported candidates financially wherever I could, and the Wisconsin race is a great example of that. Compared to Elon Musk, you might say that I got an awfully great return on investment. I think it’s $30-$40 million that he spent, not to mention offering, what, a million dollars a piece to a few people to get them to vote Republican? That seems illegal to me. But yes, I put my money where my mouth is. I happen to have the ability to support people financially.

One reason I ask is that, in Wisconsin, when Republicans were asked about Elon Musk’s spending, they’d point to you and say, Democrats have out-of-state billionaires too.

(Pritzker holds one hand high and one hand low, to illustrate the gap in their spending.) Elon Musk is one of the — well, the wealthiest person in the world, right? That was a very important race, and it’s going to make an enormous difference. The Republicans have been manipulating politics in Wisconsin, and I wanted to make sure that it was a fair fight.

Bernie Sanders has been rallying around the country, talking about the threat of an oligarchy. Do you think you’re included in that?

Well, would you put me in the same category politically as Elon Musk? I would not. I think what people talk about, when they talk about an oligarchy, is the group of the most powerful people in the society who are trying to impose their will on everyone else and make them pay for what the oligarchs are unwilling to pay for. That is clearly the opposite of what I believe in, right? I am a Democrat. I’m someone who believes in little D democracy, and someone who believes that the very people who ought to be in charge are the working families of our country, the working families of the state of Illinois, and not the wealthiest people in our state or in the country. You can use whatever word you like, but I’m saying, there’s a big difference between the people that Bernie Sanders is talking about and what I believe in.

Two questions about Congress. The House Education Oversight Committee is investigating whether the clinic at Northwestern’s Law School, which now obviously is the Pritzker law school, endorsed antisemitism by representing people in Gaza protests. Was that antisemitic, to defend those protesters?

I’m not getting involved in what they’re attacking universities about, except to say this: The attack seems to use antisemitism to actually go after what they believe are liberal institutions. The reality is that universities are places that house free speech, that give an opportunity to young people to exercise their academic capability. When there was a Muslim ban imposed in Trump’s first presidency, his first term, I went to O’Hare and there was a table of lawyers there to make sure that the law was being followed for people who were legal residents returning to the United States. I met the folks at that table, and some of them were from, guess what, the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern.

I was very proud of that fact, right? These are young people who believe in something, they’re out there standing up for it. I don’t think the universities should be under attack by the federal government. So many of the great developments that exist in our society, our universities developed. So to have the federal government decide that they’re just going to pull away from universities and use antisemitism as an excuse seems un-American to me.

You’re also being invited to the House Oversight Committee to talk about “sanctuary cities.” What’s going to be your defense, if you go?

Yeah, they have about 800 different ways of defining a sanctuary state or sanctuary city. We have a law on the books that was signed by my Republican predecessor called the Trust Act. All it does is it says that our local officials, local law enforcement, can’t be sequestered by the federal government to do the federal government’s job — that what we need is for our police to be stopping violent crime on the streets of Chicago or across the state of Illinois. It lets police do their job.

By the way: I want every violent criminal who’s undocumented, a violent criminal who is convicted, removed from my state and the country. And I think every Democrat should be saying that from the rafters. What we also want is comprehensive immigration reform. What does that mean? It means that people who are law-abiding, hard working, tax paying people who happen to be undocumented and have been in this country for some years — that we ought to find some path for them, right? These are the very people that, if you had a good immigration system, you’d want to have come into the country.

My family came here as refugees. My family would not have survived if this country hadn’t let them in. So, I’m a believer that immigration is not just good because we’re saving lives, but also because it’s good for our economy. And let me add one other thing: We need to secure the border. This all goes together, securing the border and having comprehensive immigration reform and finding a path for people to stay legally in this country who are law-abiding, tax paying people. Right now, we’ve got a policy that’s ruining the country, taking up citizens and disappearing them from the streets and ignoring habeas corpus.

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'Virtually all my wealth

Bill Gates announced he will give away “virtually all” his wealth through the Gates Foundation in the next 20 years. The Microsoft founder plans to distribute around $200 billion through his foundation, that centers on global health and equity initiatives, before he shutters the organization in 2045. 7

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'Virtually all my wealth

Bill Gates announced he will give away “virtually all” his wealth through the Gates Foundation in the next 20 years. The Microsoft founder plans to distribute around $200 billion through his foundation, that centers on global health and equity initiatives, before he shutters the organization in 2045.

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