MONEY LAUNDERING: How does the shadow economy work and how are millions laundered?

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Money laundering is much closer than you think. The stall near your house, where you have been buying bread for 10 years, may actually be a laundry where drug money is laundered, and you do not even know about it. Money laundering has become so sophisticated that in most cases it is simply difficult to say whether they are actually laundering! The tax service does exactly this, investigates such and a bunch of other crimes. In this topic, we will tell you how money is laundered, what are the current money laundering schemes, and what is the responsibility for this?

Contents
Chapter 1. What is money laundering?
Chapter 2. Laundering stages. How money becomes legal.
Chapter 3. The most popular money laundering scheme in 2025.
Chapter 4. Who launders money and why?
Chapter 5. Where do they hide money from taxes?
Chapter 6. Who helps in laundering?
Chapter 7. How much does it cost to launder money?
Chapter 8. How do they catch those who wash?
Chapter 9. How does it all end?
Chapter 10. An instructive story about how Artem washed for his uncles.

MONEY LAUNDERING. HOW CASHING OUT TURN A CRIME INTO BUSINESS?
Money is not just pieces of paper, it is traces and evidence. And when you get cash for something illegal, it is not money, it is a time bomb. You can’t just take a wad of bills from a dirty business and bring it to the bank. You will be asked, where did the money come from? And if you are not the son of an oil magnate or did not win the state competition, then you will be confidently fried on the slow fire of checks and interrogations.

In this topic, we will tell you how this bomb is turned into an asset, who is behind the cashing schemes, how money laundering companies work, what are the risks of participating in such schemes and why your neighbor, who “does nothing”, can be a pawn in a huge shadow system, from gray salaries to transnational offshore companies, from markets to deputies. This is a dark archive, press like in advance and we will begin.

Chapter 1. What is money laundering?
Money laundering is not rubbing soap on a banknote, as many people think from TikTok, it is a process in which dirty money, which is usually obtained from illegal activities, becomes clean and suitable for use without unnecessary questions. To put it simply, you have, for example, a million from drugs, bribes or anything at all, and you need to make sure that you can buy an apartment, open a business or transport it abroad, but at the same time, so that the tax office, banks and other organizations do not start scratching their heads, where you can get so much money from. It

is not for nothing that the phrase flies around on the Internet, in life there are two indispensable things, these are death and taxes, it was not invented out of thin air. How does all this happen and is done? Through obnaum, through one-day firms, through fake deals, through casinos, crypto, real estate, offshore, even through wedding agencies and hairdressers. By the way, that is why there will be a story about this further. How many methods? In fact, a wagon and a small cart, but the essence is always the same.

Hide the source, confuse the route, move the money through a bunch of hands and pay minimal taxes so that no one could track it. And even if they could, they would have nothing to complain about. To put it simply, laundering is the integration of dirty currency into the banking system. Sometimes the scheme is simple. You simply gave money to a friend, he transferred it to you for services, you paid for fake contracts with it, and that's it. The money is in the system. And sometimes these are such chains that even the tax authorities sit with a calculator and scratch their heads, not understanding what's what.

It is important to understand that money laundering is not about bad guys in basements. It is an entire industry with offices, accountants, lawyers. In general, a kind of fintech. It will be more interesting later, we will tell you who is involved in this, how it all happens in practice, what amounts are circulating and why anyone can become part of the system without even suspecting it.

Chapter 2. Stages of laundering. How money becomes legal.
There is a classic three-step scheme of placement, or in other words, introduction into the system.
1. Money enters legal circulation. This can be a purchase of goods, crypto, transfer through a fake company or a front man. And it is important that there must be contracts and invoices, that is, confirmation of payments.
2. Layering or mixing of finances. Money is chased through hundreds of transfers, legal entities, countries, exchanges. The task is simply to confuse the trail and mix dirty money with clean.
3. Integration or whitening. Money is returned to the owner under the guise of business income, dividends, casino winnings, and so on. There are really many options. And here you are, seemingly a law-abiding citizen, right? Your money is clean from your employer, but in fact ... Darkness. Our forum published an article with a scheme "How to launder funds through crypto."

Chapter 3. The most popular money laundering scheme in 2025.
Now I will tell you how to do it on the scale of a district, city and country. Well, I think you understand.
1. Cryptocurrency. This is everyone's favorite method in recent years. A walking washing machine. They launder funds of any scale here. From $1,000 to a billion, through mixers, blenders, DFA protocols, decentralized exchanges. Elementary. Transferred bitcoin, ran it through 5 wallets with a mixer and now, most likely, you will not prove anything and will not understand where the transaction came from.
Although even now the tax experts have learned to track such transactions, so this is not a 100% guarantee of security. An example of how they wash in crypto. One of the latest situations that occurred in February. The largest theft in history with the Bybit exchange and about $1.5 billion in ethers was stolen. The North Korean hacker group Lazarus was behind this. As a result of the attack, I repeat, about 500 thousand ethers were stolen, which at the time of the theft was worth about 1.5 million dollars.
This made this incident the biggest. And after the theft, the hackers began laundering the funds using mixers like Asapi and transferring funds through various blockchains and bridges, including Torchain. According to Seoul Bybit Banjo, about 28% of the stolen funds became untraceable, 69% can still be tracked, and 3.84% were frozen.
That is, as you understand, only about 4% were returned.
2. Fictitious individual entrepreneurs and LLCs. They open sharagas for homeless people, spin services, no one comes and buys anything, and money comes in and out. Everything really looks like a business, but it is nothing more than a screen. Tax audits in most countries give a kind of vacation from audits for new companies. In the first year, audits very rarely come to anyone.
Well, of course, unless you are chasing 2 million rubles, and you are not an individual.
3. Coffee shop, hookah bars, manicure salons. You write 200 clients per day in the report, but in fact only 10 came in. The difference is cash. On top of that, you also rent out the rent to yourself and the private cash register. Such methods have begun to fade into the background, since each establishment has video surveillance, and it is very easy to calculate how many clients the establishment had per day. You will most likely fail the test.
Choose the right and, most importantly, safe job. We have a post with job options in our Telegram channel, you can find it by the hashtag "Navigator".
4. Casinos, bookmakers and lotteries. You bet cash, lose to yourself, and receive your winnings officially. It is as if the money fell to you from luck, although all this is also staged. Nowadays, it is easier than ever to register a casino without a license somewhere on the islands and to create a laundry.
5. Financial pyramids. They hide dirty money under the guise of investment deposits. Just a banal scam project, when everything falls apart, both the body of the own deposit and the money of the owners are pulled out.
6. Salary projects. They simply pay employees, but the people are fake. The salary is cashed and returned to the boss in cash. And everything is clean at the tax office. Salaries are paid, taxes are paid, reports are normal. This scheme is more related to corruption in order to pull money out of the corner of the structure. This money will still need to be laundered additionally after the salary is issued, of course in brackets.

Chapter 4. Who launders money and why?
1. Traders. Huge volumes and all in cash. Legalized through businesses, crypto and offshore.
2. Corrupt officials. Bribes in suitcases, money spent on houses, cars, yachts. Without laundering, everything will be in plain sight, but even here they manage to get fat and stupidly register assets to their relatives, and then to the question "Why are so many supercars registered to your mother?" we get answers like this. Well, something like that.
3. Hackers. They stole crypto, like from Bybit, for example, they need to turn it into real purchasing power, then the movement with laundering begins.
4. Ordinary businessmen, as a rule, are in the gray zone. Part of the money is in the black, the rest is in the white, so as not to pay all the taxes.
5. Pseudo-charity. They open funds, receive donations, wash them through social projects. Clean, beautiful, without a trace. This is helping children. But in fact, people buy villas in Spain.

For example, a charitable organization from Europe called "The Hand of Great Help" really exists. They help children with various diseases. But the interesting fact is that on their personal page on their website there are children who need help. And these children have been hanging there for the third, fourth year, although the amounts they need for treatment are within 10 thousand euros. Knowing the income of these guys for one day, and they are calculated in tens of thousands of dollars, it would be possible to close everything in at least one week.

From this we conclude that no one works there and does not even try to create the appearance. Let's add to this that the frequent taxation for such organizations is literally zero or so. And imagine that their job is that volunteers walked the streets with boxes and asked for money for children's treatment - this is a ton of cash, respectively, extra options for money laundering.

Chapter 5. Where do they hide money from taxes?
1. The most common is offshore.
Panama, Belize, the Virgin Islands and Cyprus. No one touches the companies there. Plus this is anonymity, no taxes and bank secrecy.
2. Switzerland, Singapore and Dubai. Smart grannies don't lie under the mattress. Smart grannies work in countries where no one will ask about them.
3. Real estate. The most popular way, perhaps. Bought a house for cash, registered it in the name of a relative, mom, dad, anyone, handed it over, and now the money is going legally.
If a person is at least a little bit financially literate, then he knows that the main income does not come from rent, because in Europe it is 5-7% maximum, but from capital growth on the value of your asset. And voila, in 5-8 years, when the verification period has already passed, you simply will not be checked, the apartment is sold, and you get absolutely clean cash in hand. Then a deed of gift from the mother, to whom you registered the apartment, is drawn up, and the money is 100% clean. This is in no way a call to action, I am simply highlighting how this is happening now.
4. These are types of art. Paintings, antiques, even NFT. Bought a painting for 300 thousand dollars, then try and prove that this money is not worth it. In fact, this is a legal way to transfer cash into assets and vice versa. For example, even to sell your own paintings on Etsy, you must prove that they are not public property and do not carry any importance for the state and then you can sell without any problems, but it is precisely with proof that sometimes problems arise; a fairly well-known painting located in private collections is usually used to evade taxes and inflation; works of art are not subject to inflation and, as a rule, grow in price if the artist was a significant figure or at least had his own style; and now you own not two million dollars of useless paper, but a canvas of the same value, which is important, you can sell paintings absolutely anonymously. Which, in fact, is what the Colombian drug cartels used when they laundered their drug money.

Chapter 6. Who helps with money laundering?
Bankers who turn a blind eye to strange transactions, accountants who draw up reports and, in fact, most often come up with all these schemes, lawyers who hide schemes under the guise of optimization, black cashiers who convert your cash into transfers with explanations, that is, with some checks, confirmations, everything as needed. And fintech companies, they also fall here. Especially young and progressive ones.

There are no regulations, but the volumes are crazy. And in general, you can hide anything.

Chapter 7. How much does it cost to launder money?
Laundering ordinary cash - 10-30% commission. Through shell companies - up to 30% if you need it quickly and without unnecessary questions. Through offshore companies - up to 20% plus legal services. Cryptocurrency - only 5-15%. It all depends on the amount and the scheme. The larger the amount, the more expensive the scheme, but, as a rule, it is safer.

Money is washed, but not for free, it's like a laundress, only with the risk of going to jail. Strange things happen with taxes and money laundering in almost any large company, and if you consider that criminals sit in the regulatory authorities, it all turns into a santzara wheel that enriches everyone around in parallel with money laundering.

Chapter 8. How do they catch those who wash?
1. 115 FZ. Law against money laundering. Any suspicious transaction - account blocking.
Made a transfer of 250 thousand rubles - you can say goodbye to the bank for a month. And it's good if they just freeze it, and do not force you to report where the money came from. More often than not, the second case happens.
2. Financial monitoring. Every movement and transaction above a certain amount - they are different in each country - is under control. Especially if you do not have a permanent job, and millions are chasing on the card.
3. International investigations. FATF, Interpol, Europol. If these guys get to you, hello extradition.
This is what happened to Oleg Tinkov, for example, who underpaid billions of dollars in US taxes. How do they report it? He only listed $300,000 in his declarations, although, as you understand, there was much more. According to US law, if you are a citizen and live outside the US, you are still obliged to pay taxes both in the US and in the country where you work. So he was lucky, he got off with a fine of $506 million, but he could have gone to jail.
4. Informers. There will always be someone inside the schemes who will leak for the sake of their own skin or banal envy. By the way, this is far from a rare situation. A tip from neighbors, after all... Why?! A Soviet-era house arrives in a new C-class. Something like that. Fifth. Operatives. They led to a front driver, he led the company, the company led the lawyer, and now the whole circle is under surveillance.

Chapter 9. How does it all end?
The easiest one. Blocking of accounts. The money can simply be frozen. And that's it. It's not yours anymore. Of course, you can try to get it, but you'll have to go through 8 circles of hell to make it happen. By the way, write your stories, how your accounts were blocked and whether they were blocked at all. This will greatly help promote the channel. We are trying very hard. Also, don't forget for the subscription. The next is confiscation of property. Houses, cars, businesses. Everything will go to the state.

The worst thing, in my opinion, is a term of up to seven years for money laundering. If on a large scale, then up to fifteen. If, by the way, through offshore companies with a group of people, and this is proven, then it may even be longer. Offshore companies themselves are not prohibited everywhere and are most likely even legal, they are just not always packaged correctly and dirty dirt is simply brought there. And, of course, your reputation may suffer. Even if you don't go to jail, at least from the banks' side you are kicked out of the banking system forever.

No loans, no cards, no accounts, white life is closed.

Chapter 10. An instructive story about how Artem washed for his uncles.
Artem was a businessman, his own barbershop and everything seemed legal, but in reality the situation was completely different. Money from casinos and cashing out passed through him, in general, a black naum. Everything was clear until the moment when his friend, by the way, leaked information about him. Then the whole scheme began to crumble, since he obviously couldn't pass the checks.

He sold the barbershop for debts to pay off the tax authorities. The money was gone, his friends forgot. Well, they were more likely not friends, but it doesn't matter, that's not what this video is about. In general, nothing was left from a not very profitable, but importantly profitable enterprise. Therefore, friends, the Dark Archive administration does not recommend getting involved in dubious schemes where there is even the slightest chance of jail. Choose a direction where the risk is zero.

And yes, if you don't know who the mammoth is in the diagram, then you are most likely the mammoth.
 
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