Azrael the cat
Arcane
money laundering
That's easy - it has nothing to do with buying/selling shares, and everything to do with having a company whose profit and loss is difficult to predict. You see in the nice old days for gangsters, they could just pimp some prostitutes, launder some money, deal a few drugs and bootleg alcohol and then go live in their mansions, stopping only to fill a speakeasy with Tommy-gun bullets for lulz every now and then. Then the feds in the US got wise and prosecuted the gangster head Al Calpone for.....tax evasion. You see they couldn't nail him on his various crimes, but they COULD show that he has a f**** huge house, cars etc and must have a lot of money - and he hasn't been declaring ANY of it on his tax forms
.
Since then, that has become standard tax office procedure around the world. In most countries the tax office comes along, checks out how much money you have and tax you on it. Now that's ok, if you're a badass mafia boss you can probably afford to pay the tax. But then there is teensy problem of explaining how it was that you EARNT the money. And this is where obscure companies come in handy.
In some countries it has gotten to the point where (eg in my state of Western Australia) if you can't explain where you got the money to buy your house/car/bank account etc, the prosecution can DEEM that you must have got it illegally and hence confiscate the whole fucking lot! So if you want to make $$$ from money laundering or drugs, you need to have a cover. Most of the mobsters in Aus have traditionally used nightclubs. The reason is that whilst most nightclubs make fuck all, it is almost impossible to PROVE what they make or lose - if you're rigging the books there's simply no way that a tax inspector can estimate your takings, it is just too difficult to keep track of all the different people buying drinks etc, and you have so many different suppliers (plus door charge, which you can just make up) that they can't trace it that way either.
Now they could be using Interplay for that, but it's unlikely, as you could easily trace their profits by tracking what they've sold to retailers and publishers etc. MORE LIKELY they could be using the other method - i.e. HIDING the money. What this involves is having a company that could feasibly be losing a lot of money, but again it is very difficult to check how much. Then you invest lots of the money that you've gained from your pimping and drugdealing into the company but only in things that are (a) resellable AND (b) difficult to nail an exact price on. So when you want the money you can 'withdraw' it by selling company stock where the transactions can be falsified (i.e. the values changed). This then lets you reinvest into setups of the first type mentioned above (or even legit investments) at a slow and steady rate, making it more difficult to detect.
Capisce?
Wilco said:
That's easy - it has nothing to do with buying/selling shares, and everything to do with having a company whose profit and loss is difficult to predict. You see in the nice old days for gangsters, they could just pimp some prostitutes, launder some money, deal a few drugs and bootleg alcohol and then go live in their mansions, stopping only to fill a speakeasy with Tommy-gun bullets for lulz every now and then. Then the feds in the US got wise and prosecuted the gangster head Al Calpone for.....tax evasion. You see they couldn't nail him on his various crimes, but they COULD show that he has a f**** huge house, cars etc and must have a lot of money - and he hasn't been declaring ANY of it on his tax forms
.Since then, that has become standard tax office procedure around the world. In most countries the tax office comes along, checks out how much money you have and tax you on it. Now that's ok, if you're a badass mafia boss you can probably afford to pay the tax. But then there is teensy problem of explaining how it was that you EARNT the money. And this is where obscure companies come in handy.
In some countries it has gotten to the point where (eg in my state of Western Australia) if you can't explain where you got the money to buy your house/car/bank account etc, the prosecution can DEEM that you must have got it illegally and hence confiscate the whole fucking lot! So if you want to make $$$ from money laundering or drugs, you need to have a cover. Most of the mobsters in Aus have traditionally used nightclubs. The reason is that whilst most nightclubs make fuck all, it is almost impossible to PROVE what they make or lose - if you're rigging the books there's simply no way that a tax inspector can estimate your takings, it is just too difficult to keep track of all the different people buying drinks etc, and you have so many different suppliers (plus door charge, which you can just make up) that they can't trace it that way either.
Now they could be using Interplay for that, but it's unlikely, as you could easily trace their profits by tracking what they've sold to retailers and publishers etc. MORE LIKELY they could be using the other method - i.e. HIDING the money. What this involves is having a company that could feasibly be losing a lot of money, but again it is very difficult to check how much. Then you invest lots of the money that you've gained from your pimping and drugdealing into the company but only in things that are (a) resellable AND (b) difficult to nail an exact price on. So when you want the money you can 'withdraw' it by selling company stock where the transactions can be falsified (i.e. the values changed). This then lets you reinvest into setups of the first type mentioned above (or even legit investments) at a slow and steady rate, making it more difficult to detect.
Capisce?
