Once money changes hands to purchase anything legitimate, the money is effectively “laundered.” That means if someone were to say how did you come by that money, the criminal simply says, “I sold the real estate and, after paying the outstanding mortgage, was left with proceeds of $XXX.”
The only way for the illegal funds to be identified is for the receiving agent - typically a Title Company - to question why someone would pay for a house in cash. Of course, a bank might convert currency to cash, but any cash received in excess of $10 thousand must be reported by the bank on a Currrency Transaction Report (CTR) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or FinCEN.
More typical would be to engage in a heavy cash business, such as fast food. Many people pay in cash at McDonald’s and other restaurants. The cash is then deposited at a bank. If one owned 30 stores, they would simply look like a busy store if they added $1,000 to $1,500 to each of the twice-daily receipts. They would also deposit odd amounts (i.e., not the same amounts) each time and the actual deposits would be less than $10,000 - although they could be amounts such as $8,896 or $9,483. In this way, upwards of $3,000 in money from drug sales or to be used in terrorism from each of 40 stores could go into the bank each day. After 30 days, that would add up to $3.6 million.
NOTE: Any business that receives more than $10,000 in cash must, in addition to the bank reporting the transaction on a CTR, file a Form 8300 with the IRS.
Once the cash has been deposited and processed through the bank, that money could be used, in part (not the entire amount) to purchase real estate. Now, the transaction would be so obfuscated that no one would be the wiser.
The key for law enforcement is to scrutinize cash businesses, like McDonald’s. In other words, one can’t just own 40 stores. Questions can be asked, as someone buys more and more stores. At some point the question still has to be: Where did you get the money to buy the store? Often, the answer is a greedy owner would be offered money for a “silent partner” to come in. Any legitimate businessman should reject such an offer!
i could go on and on about establishing businesses in anonymous way with stealth. However, I will not provide evil people with the how-tos to build their drug cartels and terrorist networks!
http://pearlem.com/