Does Money Laundering Happen Often In Casinos Due
Money Laundering Through Casinos
How Does Laundering Money Work
Does Money Laundering Happen Often In Casinos In America

Money laundering is the act that enables criminals to camouflage money that originates from a dirty, illegal Source A so that it looks like it came from a clean, legal Source Z. When funds from illegal activity are integrated into the financial system, it appears that they belong to legitimate sources like trading in drugs, financing terrorism arm and weapons smuggling, prostitution, and human trafficking. Criminals do this by hiding the sources or moving the money to a place where it is less probable to attract attention. This process involves stages of money laundering as follows; Placement, Layering, Integration.

Stage One: Placement

Money laundering placement is the process of placing unlawful proceeds into financial institutions through deposits, wire transfers, or other means. The money is placed into the financial system through banks, casinos, shops, and other businesses in the placement stage. This phase can involve various types of transactions like breaking up large amounts of money into smaller sums and depositing them directly into bank accounts, transporting cash across borders to deposit the money in financial institutions abroad, or buying precious goods like artwork, antiques, diamond, and gold. That can be resold for payment by cheque or bank transfer.

Attorney General David Eby (background) and investigator Peter German at the release of German’s report, Dirty Money, in Vancouver, June 27, 2018, into money laundering at B.C casinos. As casinos are gladly receiving cash and focused on gaining the standard fee from punters, they welcome huge money amounts to be deposited. Moreover, gambling firms are often regarded as the destination or chain-link during the layering process, so the importance of anti-money laundering procedures is needed in the sector. Casinos are often portrayed in the media as places with bad reputation. Along with gambling's moral conflict with virtue, and the known social burden of addiction, casinos are also stigmatized for alleged links to organized crime and money laundering.

Money laundering can range from simple to complex strategies. Examples include: Structuring: Also known as “smurfing,” cash is broken into smaller deposits of money, used to defeat suspicion of money laundering and to avoid anti–money laundering reporting requirements (banks usually have to report transactions in excess of $10,000).

Stage Two: Layering

What is layering? Layering meaning is the process of separating the proceeds of criminal activity from their origin through the use of layers of complex financial transactions. Layering for money laundering is gradually adding legitimacy to the source of illicit money, making it as difficult to detect as possible. Layering is generally considered the most complex component of the money laundering process. It intentionally involves multiple financial intermediaries and transactions to confuse AML checks. Some of the pathways utilized during this step include:

Changing the money's currency.

Multiple inter-bank transfers.

Multiple structured deposits and withdrawals, aka 'smurfing.'

Purchasing high-value items such as diamonds, cars, or property.

Multiple wire transfers between different accounts in different countries.

Opening 'shell' companies.

Investing in businesses with minimal paperwork such as currency exchanges, art galleries, and car washes.

Using money 'mules.'

To detect layering, it is essential to understand its place in the money laundering process. The money is moved to different accounts through a series of financial transactions designed to hide the money's origin in the layering stage. This layering phase can involve legitimate transactions like buying in real estate and lawful businesses, placing money in investments such as stocks and bonds, or using a shell company to hide the real owners of the business finally.

Stage Three: Integration

Integration money laundering is the process of using legitimate transactions to disguise illicit proceeds. In the integration stage, the funds are reintroduced into the economy to appear to belong to legitimate sources. This helps the criminal clean the dirty money, invest it, and profit from it. As a result, it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal well by the integration stage.

After going through multiple laundering pathways, the dirty money finally re-enters the mainstream financial system as a legitimate transaction. This often takes the form of business investment, purchase, or the sale of an asset bought during the layering stage. By this point, the criminal can generally use the 'clean' money without getting caught. In general, detection and identification of laundered funds provide through informants. The known methods used are:

Property dealing.
Front companies and false loans.
Foreign bank complicity.
False important/export invoices.

Why Money Laundering A Serious Problem?

Money laundering has potentially devastating economic, security, and social consequences. It gives the fuel for drug dealers, terrorists, illegal arms dealers, corrupt public officials, and others to operate and extend their criminal enterprises. Crime has become increasingly international in scope. The financial aspects of crime have become more complicated due to rapid technological advances and globalization's financial services industry.

Money laundering is a problem not only in the world's major financial markets and sea-side countries but also in emerging markets. As emerging markets open up their economies and financial sectors, they become increasingly appropriate targets for money laundering activities. Money laundering creates unpredictable shifts in money demand and causes large fluctuations in global capital flows and exchange rates.

If you want to learn more about the negative effects, you can read our 'Negative Effects of Money Laundering' article.

What Should Businesses Do To Prevent Money Laundering?

In all steps from production to consumption, tax evasion should be prevented, and large money movements should be monitored.

Does Money Laundering Happen Often In Casinos Due

The media should fully support the fight against organized crime and should not broadcast to legendary mafia members.
In the private sector, cartels should be prevented, and the underground economy should be reduced by eliminating tax-free earnings as much as possible.
Businesses can protect themselves from financial crimes and strengthen AML compliance processes using AML software such as Sanction Scanner.

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AlanMendelson

Thanks for this post from:

Alan claims it's rare and and can't be considered legit.

I said nothing about legitimacy. I said it's not standard practice.
Things can be outside standard practice but still be legitimate and legal.
My point was you shouldn't bet against things that go against standard practice as they can still happen.AxelWolf

Thanks for this post from:

You're already apparently alluding to drama from other forums, which is impermissible.