How to Launder Money

First of all: Don’t break the law. Don’t break the law. Don’t break the law.

Now I would like to discuss money laundering.

This is a topic that has nagged at me since the movie “Office Space” was released. How can a bunch of highly educated people not have a clue as to how to launder money? ANY amount of money? It is ridiculous to think that people who have been to college can’t figure out how to make something as anonymous as CASH become an untraceable item.

There are two driving principles to launder money: (1) You want it to be untraceable. In order for the money to be untraceable you need to convert it from one type of monetary system to a different type of monetary system, or you need to send it from one anonymous account to a different anonymous bank account with timed transactions. And (2) Once you have this money, you want to be able to spend the money without fear of being tracked down.

Pretend you have somehow acquired a few thousand dollars (no more than say…$100k) and you want to spend it…but you don’t know the history of the money and you suspect that it may be money that was acquired through less-than honorable means.

Normally of course, one would be inclined to turn in the money to the authorities, but for the purpose of this posting let’s presume that if you go to the authorities someone in your immediate family will have to face the music and go to jail or otherwise face legal punishment or criminalization.

This first method will not work for massive amounts of illegal cash for a one-person operation…but for small amounts of questionably obtained money there is a simple method to make acquired money virtually untraceable.

The Visa Gift Card method is easy and is as close as the nearest bank. You most likely don’t even have to be a member. Simply walk into your bank with a reasonable amount of cash and ask for a Visa Gift Card. Use the Visa website to find a local bank. This safely and anonymously converts the illegal cash into a very legitimate form of payment that can be used to book a vacation around the world, or just to buy groceries at the local market. Once you have turned the money into a gift card, the card could even be used to anonymously purchase items to send to people who have wronged you. For example, that pesky neighbor whose dog is always leaving deposits in your front yard could suddenly start receiving a subscription to, “Soggy Biscuit Monthly” or some other equally repulsive publication. Just make sure you don’t order anything nasty from your home computer - use your local library or a coffee house public computer.

The other method for laundering massive amounts of money is with timed transactions with anonymous off-shore bank accounts.

Fortunately, John Grisham actually published a definitive guide to laundering money in his 1991 breakthrough novel, The Firm.

If you are too lazy to read the entire book you could check out the movie, but one will not get the level of detail that one would get from reading the book and using it as a guide.

Keep in mind this information is supplied “as-is” for discussion purposes only. Don’t break the law. Neither the author of this post nor this website makes any claim that this information is valid and we definitely do not recommend that anyone follow any suggestions in this post.

The author of this post recommends that you should not break the law. EVER! When in doubt, always check the local laws of your country and make sure your actions are 100% legal.