for those of you who don't know, I'm a licenced investment professional. I thought I could offer details for those who want a little more detail than just passing it through a fixer and netting 33%.

and for the record no I do not do this, but I have to know what to look out for because if something goes down it's my ass and licence on the line.

The bottom line with laundering money whether form selling chips or a pay off from Mr johnson you need to put it into a legal setting-like a bank or investment account, and then take it out again. once it is out, it is yours and clean. The trick is to have a credible source of where the money came form if someone asks 'where'd you get this?"

To do this you need and investment company that is either on the take or not to sharp about details.

1)on the take: this is the easiest to do. money is deposited into a bank's dummy account. The account is monitored by the bought asset. You then go to him and apply for a loan. he pays you with the money out of the dummy account. You do not pay back the loan. If someone asks where you got the , you borrowed it. no one's business if you default on the loan.

The fees paid to the asset to cover the tracks at his end keep the bank from finding out about it.

This works better if you can get someone in a tax exempt organization, like a church, charity or the UB since they make loans and do not have to divulge where they got assets from. "No we got an annonymous donation of 100K....and we just loaned 80k to a Mr Hotlead. I'm sure he'll pay us back"A charity in need of supprot would be very suspetable to this.

2)loose books. any transaction over $10,000 in 2006 RL must be reported to the IRS. often times people will deposit $9,990, $9,650, $9,800 etc into an account, and then later take a loan against it. This comes in under the IRS notice but the banking institute should keep an eye out for this. In RL this is one of the things Barry Bonds is accused of doing.

OR if you open an account for long term investments- annuity/mutual fund etc a client is supposed to fill out a questionaire showing their resources and goals. This is to ensure the agent has sold them a product appropriate to them- like if I sell a very risky item to someone who does not want loss, or a long term investyment to a 93 year old man , I'm going to have to explain to my boss what I was thinking.

But if I do it straight up and suddenly a person is putting in funds way out of proportion to what they told me, I have to question it. but if I'm not keeping that close an eye on my clients, maybe I won't notice that the mechanic with $25,000 income just invested $80,000. The other thing is someone who opens an account and then closes it soon after, regardless of expenses(there are usually penalties on raidly closing) sure it happens but if you notice a pattern of an agent who has account that keep being closed soon after opened, his books are going to get a closer look. people closing the accounts don't mind the surrender fees, that is what they see as the cost of laundering the money. Think about it. you put :nuyen:80K in an annuity and 2 months later you close the account. Pay 8% in surrender fees (about industry standard that soon) and a 3-4% bone to the agent who lost his commission and you walk away with 88% of what you put in.

So, does this help anyone? Give anyone ideas?

Nifty. I had a loose idea about it, but it's cool to see a couple of hard and fast ways it's done.

for the first one, i assume your bought asset also does the work of making sure his banking institution doesn't pursue the defaulted loan with any real vigor?

Fun. Thanks Snow.

Glad I could add AH,

A couple more laundry methods to toss on the list here. These aren't really bank related, and they follow on sort of different veins. I am not in an accounting or related job myself. Just a hard working teamster union representative that knows lots of people. These are my understandings from people that are in positions where this sort of stuff comes up. Either like Snowfox where they have to watch to make sure they don't become an unwitting party to it, or they have the opportunity to be a knowing party to it. But of course don't. *taps side of nose*

The first is method is really more of a tax dodge, and a double reverse version of one of Snowfox's examples. A legitamate business makes a personal loan to a third party. That third party then pays cash back to the business owner, possibly holding onto a small cut or receiving some other favour in return. The business then eventually declares it on the books as a bad loan that they don't expect to get money back on, and therefore an income loss. The end result is that the business owner has gotten money out of his business without he or his business paying income taxes on it.

Another laundry method is for things like the construction of buildings. Dirty money is used to pay off trade workers in cash. These trade workers in turn don't need to declare that income, and thus the building owner is thus usually getting pretty value from the dirty money. As a bonus the building owner also doesn't have to pay tax on this laundried money until the building is sold. If the building was created as being owned by a family's estate trust (to avoid inheretance tax laws) or a business this could effectively be indefinately delaying paying income tax directly on the capital gains. Although they would still be paying income tax on the rental income, assuming that isn't also being handled via the blackmarket.

Now of course you do need some workers on payroll, so you can play this the other way too. Afterall that building didn't build itself. But those people that are on payroll, well there could be an inordinately high number of them that just need a job to keep their parole officer happy. Of course they show up for work regularly, really good worker and upstanding gentleman that seems to have turned his life around. They just happen to have called in sick today. Ya know what I mean?

So sometimes your fixer will handle payment to you from the Johnson via an ongoing day job that you never need to show up at. Just so you know the right answers to give if anyone asks. While you do have to pay income tax on this, the fixer will usually bulk up the salary to adjust for that so the cred you get after the UCAS takes their cut is the right amount. Getting paid this way has it's benefits as you can then go out and get credit or buy things that the average Joe Lunchbox can, like a mortgage for buying an ocean view condo in the ACHE or a legit goods like a car, without the grind of getting up before noon and being tied down to some crappy life like poor old Joe Lunchbox. Of course some of the loans you do take out with your good looking credit you might eventually default on. See method number one.

Anything rental business has potential as well. Especially businesses that don't typically have a stellarly high rate of rental charge-out time for the equipment. You simply make up customers. Afterall who is to say that you didn't manage to rent out a particular piece of equipment 90% of the time instead of only 40% of the time. Heavy equipment is a good example here as their charge-out rates are extremely high, and the equipment actually holds it value quite well for resale later as long as it is in good shape or can last a large number of years as an actual real rental income if it doesn't truely have the hours on it you claim it does. You can also pick up used equipment to start the business initially from a cooperative person with incremental payments that fit underneath that 10K limit Snowfox was talking about. Downside is you are paying income tax on all this rental income.

One more: Get Mr. J to give you insider information. I.e:

UpAndComing Corporation (UACC) tries to secure a largo loan from RealyBigBank(RBB). Depending on wether they get the loan or not, their stocks will either rise or fall. Now the information wether or not the loan is approved is available in RBB a few days before UACC learns about it (Waiting for final nod from the Boss etc). Banks have a complex system in place to prevent the people "in the know" from profiting but as an unconnected Runner, you won't be tracked.

So instead of money to launder, you get some insider tips and invest already clean money. The stock moves, you cash in (you can cash in even if stocks drop, it't called options) The money is automatically clean.

but remember folks, the safest way to double your money is to fold it in half and stick in your pocket.

One method our team did to make money, was to use insider info like Birdy was saying. In one run we knew that there was going to be a public explosion from a corp that'd be all over the news (since we planted it). So as soon as the run was over, we put a call out on Put Shares for the corps stock, when the explosion went off, the stock tumbled and we doubled or quadrupled our pay money.

One other we did was to put bets on the Urban Brawl match we were sent to fix.

How difficult is it to launder money at a casino?

You know, show up with 5 grand in cash, play something safe for a couple of hours (I hear you can get some games to have a .95% payoff, playing a formula -- meaning you bet $100 and get back $95 over time).

When you cash out, it's nice and clean, since you may have 'won' it, and I doubt they bother recording the identity of every cash transaction. You could pretty easily turn 5 grand in cash to 5 grand in chips a couple hundred at time at different tables.

Holy shit, my geiger counter just went off the charts!

*looks again* Oh, it's just my sarcasm meter. False alarm.



Another good way to launder money, I think (not at all connected to investment banking or whatever, so I'm probably wrong,) would be to have Mr. Johnson pay you in material assets that are valuable - like bars of gold, chunks of orichilum, or whatever. These things probably have pretty good 'set' values, and of course they open more possibilities than a flat transaction.

10,000 is 10,000 , and what it buys you may fluctuate from day to day or week to week. But a bar of gold may be 10,000 today, it might be 14,000 tomorrow, depending on scarcity. But you can be pretty sure it won't suddenly become 6,000 , so it's a fairly hedged bet.

First things first: Thanks Snow Fox, great idea.

My runners were paid with a no-need-to-show-up job just monday, and were quite pleased with the idea.

2nd: Money is not earmarked. Take one fake SIN. Transfer money to said SIN. Buy tradeable goods with high price per volume and good resale price. Try magical goods. You are now working in import/export. Pay fake NAN SIN for said magical goods. Sell magical goods to talismonger later. Fake NAN SIN is now in possession of legal cash.

In effect, all the tricks of today with easy access to alternate identities.

Yes, but you've got to remember. This is the balkanized Sixth World here.

You take an NAN SIN to a vBank in Seattle. They send a querry to the NAN.

SeaTac Querry: Is <Long-String 'o Numbers> a valid SIN.?
NAN System Reply: Please Stand By.
NAN System Reply (five minutes later): <Long-String 'o Numbers> is Valid.
SeaTac Querry: Are you sure?
NAN System Reply: Please Stand By.
NAN System Reply (Twenty-Four hours later): Yes, we're sure!
SeaTac Querry: Okay.

Now, you may be line-between-lines impaired. For your edification, we have magnified the lines between the lines.

Awesome.

Actually, there is an International SIN database (Sysem Failure page 122). They wouldn't send a query to NAN; instead, they would sent a query to the Global SIN Registry.

Birdy is right, the problem with having cash is that you have to show where it came from.

A purchase of stocks as you know something is about to go down (after is no good because everyone who just saw the news is doing the same thing) is that all such purchases get reviewed. even if it's explainable it gets attention and that is bad- remember Martha Stewart?

Barry Bonds is looking at 5 years inside if convicted of money laundering. He did lots of shows where he was paid cash to sign autographs etc. then he had his g/f deposit it into acocunts in ammounts of less than $10k each. he never declared it and by putting it in in those incriments he showed he was aware of and was avoiding the babnking laws. How did this turn out? his g/f turned state';s evidence on him-oops, screwed over by the fixer!

Brahm had some good, and less good points. A good way to launder money for a regular income is to have a job you don't hsow up for. someone is convinced to write you a regular check for something you never show up to. Your income osurce? Hey i've got this gig over at.... Remember John Gotti, the 'tephlon don' of New york until Guiliani brought him down officially was a 'plumber" His son in law- Carmine Agnelli was really a mechanic. inmfact Agnelli was so good they had toruble finding a NY judge ot try him. Severla had used him and refered him to friends "I know this great guy in Statan Island."

As for ocmpanies cleaningm oney by 'lending'it to someone who defaults onthe loan, no. the IRS will want to know where the money cvame from to lend to someone else in the first place.

Casinos- very popular to clean money-but there has to be some realy insider in the casinos to give you a receipt for your chips. The government keeps minders in the casinos to track who wins what. The idea is that someone who wins big is not going to escape without having the win recorded so they must pay taxes. If you report a BIG win they will wonder how they missed it, but if you had a good weekend and happily pay the taxes, they won't notice(thank you citizen.) do it too often and they will wonder how they keep missing it and will start to watch you. (At the begining of July NEw Jersey government shut down for a few days on a budget dispute. Part of this meant casinos in Atlantic City were shut becausethe state minders were laid off.)

I think everyone here is looking at this from too literal a perspective.


Remember, this is Shadowrun. Every fricking person can be bought. From Al of Al's Contractors straight up to the UCAS federal auditors. And fuck the UCAS - we have Extraterritorial Megacorporations. You swank into the UCAS with which you use your fake ID to set up with. They ask you where you got the money, Renraku gave it to you. Piss off. They ask Renraku, who also tell them to piss off. They have no way of knowing whether the money from Renraku is for legitimate work or not - or even if Renraku gave you the money, or simply acted as an intermediary, or whatever. (Remembering that in this case, "Renraku" could mean the whole corp, or just one person with the right shot-calling powers within the corp.)

what your assuming is that the corp will back you. they don't know you. you're a deniable asset. If the law or a corp wants to screw you over they don't have to prove you got the money illegally, you have to prove you got it legitimately. The IRS is still can make your life hell.

Suppose there's a nice file on you with SK. They notice you got a big boost in your life style 2 weeks after their top researcher disappeared from the antwerp facility or some decker raiderd the piggy bank of their Beunos Ares fire team. Mr SK exec has been looking ofr an excuse to spend assets to bring you down OR needs a patsy to cover the fact HE raided the piggy bank.

big purchase, like a car, get the attnetion of the IRS, remember the $10k rule. If you have that money where did it come form? Do you have more. WHERE IS THE TAXES YOU PAID ON THAT? and then 'I'm sorry sir we cannot complete the sale without valid tax documents"

buying it off the black market?

Well sir seems we ran the VIN on this car that you left at Sea-Tac mall and seems it doesn't exists, care ot explain that?

All these create criminal files baout you. That doesn't seem like much "Frag I fgot a speeding ticket" but each piece of intel means a hticker file if someone wants to really screw with you.

I never said anything about the sanity of trusting the corp. Only that using extraterritorial and extranational paranoia as your smokescreen was your best bet.

Unless you're a corp sell-out, trusting the corp is a fast ticket to a shallow unmarked grave, and if you ARE a corp sell-out, it's a slow ticket to same.

Good information.

Not to invalidate the idea of money laundering, but it's not necessary for most shadowrunners. It's only usefull if you want to live a legit life. Most shadowrunners live inside a shadow economy, buying illegal goods such as cyberware, firearms, whatever. They deal with other criminals who dont give a hootnanny about if you obtained your money through fraudulent activities.

The only part that might be legit is the lifestyle of runners. If they live in a nice condo and stuff, you surface from the shadows, so the governement could take an interest in you. But seriously, how likely is that? Only if you have a High lifestyle and above is the governement likely to start asking where your income comes from. Below that, you're not worth their time. Also, runners can arrange some sort of deal to pay rent in a way that it doesnt appear in the books - pay the landlord cash or the likes.

It's not easy to live strictly in the Shadows. Doing that means you can't even so much as pop into a Stuffer Shack for a Micro-Nuke ™ (product of Aztechnology Food Division, Inc) sandwich.

Of course you can. Pay cash/certified cred or use a rating 1 fake SIN.

Even that leaves a trail.

Money laundering is something that a runner needs if he want's to "come in from the cold" and live an official life. IMHO this is a "done once" stuff when you made the big heist and decide to become a citizen in good standing.

As long as a runner lives in the shadows I agree with Backgammon. As a SINless (and IMHO all runner should be SINless) you don't pay taxes and use resonably cheap throw-away SINs for those purchases that you can't do on the grey/black market.

For that to work (and IMHO for style purposes) I assume that real money still exists. This is partially due to the fact that I prefer the "briefcase of cash" style exchange and simply can't see the whino with a cred transfer device. If money does not exists anymore, you will get a shadow market that uses it's own currency (Precious metals, Drugs, Gems - Whatever is rare and easily checked for pureness) and Shadowrunners will get payed in goods rather than cash more often.

Good idea and good references for connected ideas. Thank you.

I had my team payed for a toxic shaman bounty in half nuyen and half diamonds. Yes I didn't want to give them a solid mil in certified nuyen but the DIMR also wanted to track these runners. Without the electrical paper work on the diamonds they could not sell them legally so had the 33% black market return. They did look at the option of laundering them but again the question was how? The decker with time and imagination could of over come this with the right implanted data in the right places. In the end they chose the safer I am SINless so track me now B***H option.

Laundering has its place but only applies when you try to live out side of the shadows. Also a triple AAA corp bank will not ask where you got the certified nuyen cred stick for your Ebony account only check that its not forged. I use DocWagon's med cover for the proof of this example. Real money real service. It is in effect offshore accounting something most goverments dislike due to the lack of taxs but you remain SINless with no legal rights but no legal requirements.

Global SIN Registry.

Hhmm, not sure how I feel about this GSR business.

the other thing about laundering in the Sr universe is not just tax evasion but ALSO making sure that the corp who's piggy bank you raided can't trace the money back to you. I know the IRS agents can be nasty, but they want you to keep working so they can tax you more, that Ares Firewatch team just wants to redecorate the ceiling of your doss with the grey matter you keep in your head.