eBay: the ulitmate money launderer?

[[AK]Clay]

I've always felt a little unclean buying "new" used goods off of eBay, since odds are it was probably lifted off a truck or a shelf.

Now I'm hearing interesting reports of things like used video cards and other items going for curious prices, often 10X to 100X what they're really worth. But always for just a little bit less than $10,000. Which just so happens to be just below the cutoff for having to report the transaction to the feds. This smells like money laundering. Who knows if the video card even existed, but it sounds like a great way to wash cash. Do it 100 times, and you just laundered a million bucks.

Or am I paranoid and this is too simplistic? I figure some of our banking guru's might have some intersting comentary on this!

[[AK]Beaker]

Chances are if you are hearing such reports law enforcement is hearing these reports as well.

[[AK?]Azmodious]

Having retired from my own personal life of crime. I can tell you that ebay has been used for many different types of illegal acts for many years. and what you are talking about could very well be laundering. Not the wisest way to do so.. Using an online resource to launder money leaves some fairly solid lines back to the person performing the laundering.. I.P traces are nasty and even most public access points now have cameras somewhere. Good thing about using ebay though is if you keep the numbers reasonable and have a few mock shipments (shipping receipts would be asked for if ever investigated) it would be hard to prove anything.. but people running just under the $10K marker for $100-$500 parts are not thinking clearly. Granted I have known people in my FAR DISTANT past to have ordered whole chemistry labs off of ebay (including quite a few federally controlled parts) and never hear anything about it... So the total volume of online crime completely dwarfs any attempt to control it.

[[AK]Bojan]

I've always felt a little unclean buying "new" used goods off of eBay, since odds are it was probably lifted off a truck or a shelf.

Now I'm hearing interesting reports of things like used video cards and other items going for curious prices, often 10X to 100X what they're really worth. But always for just a little bit less than $10,000. Which just so happens to be just below the cutoff for having to report the transaction to the feds. This smells like money laundering. Who knows if the video card even existed, but it sounds like a great way to wash cash. Do it 100 times, and you just laundered a million bucks.

Or am I paranoid and this is too simplistic? I figure some of our banking guru's might have some intersting comentary on this!

lol you got some cash you need laundered?! Send it my way, ill spend...er I mean wash it for you.

[[AK]Bribo]

I've heard that ebay, PayPal, and internet gambling sites are notorious resources for money laundering. Most of these sites will let you set up an account with an email address and a credit card number - things easily obtained if you are a criminal.

[[AK]Hylander]

The Federal Government and Taxes is the biggest money laundering scheme going...

[[AK]Sonic Boom]

Kind of interesting that this week's The Economist has an article on money laundering that, in the name of journalism, actually explains step-by-step how to do it and which G-20 countries are the easiest and most difficult.

Interestingly, the United States is by far the easiest. Register a dummy corporation in Delaware, Nevada, or Wyoming and use that to open a bogus bank account.

I wonder how many drug dealers read The Economist?

[[AK]Ozzred]

It does make sense and seems simple enough. But it'd also be extremely easy to track and identify suspects.

2 ways - the first being manual by setting up a simple report it website. Just a couple fields - buyer, seller, suspicious auction(s), and comparison links to similar or identical items.

the second would be using data analysis to automatically classify each item and compare average cost to final auction price. Buyer, seller, auction, and item info is sent to authorities.

I wonder how many drug dealers read The Economist?

The successful ones.