I think you're correct. The title confused met with the content. It's all about transferring money from one place to another and a way to cash it out and use it. It's actually still "black" money because it's not laundered yet.
Laundering is when I can justify to the IRS that my fund are earned legitimated eg. no criminal activity AND I paid my taxes on it.
I especially enjoyed a fraudster's description of his son's profits in World of Warcraft:
In 2006 or 2007 my son sold 80,000 gold to IGE and they paid him $70 per 1000g. That's right, $5,600
directly to his PayPal account. He got most of the gold through selling as he types this: "aq20 spellbooks
from guild bank around level 60"
Honestly speaking, this paper has nothing to do with criminal money laundering. Just a snapshot of third-grade forum with script kiddies out of inner circles.
Money laundering is when several fake corporations established and begin transfering shitpiles of botnet and card money from Baltic states to "isles" to such an extent that whole countries are scared of opening accounts for "internet startups" after that.
yeah, I just now learned arxiv isn't peer reviewed. Considering magnitude helps with perspective.
However, is it far fetched to think illicit funds might finance the development of a virtual economy, in a mobile game perhaps, that could be used to launder money? Seems theres a need for fraud detection practices to extend into virtual economies as well.
However, is it far fetched to think illicit funds might finance the development of a virtual economy, in a mobile game perhaps, that could be used to launder money?
I don't think so.. The lure is that it can be fast and automated, and that using new technology will help avoiding the feds.
Why bother? Any financial attorney in any part of the world knows how to cash or launder money, or, at least, will point to someone who can (for a small mediator fee).
The thing is, what criminal money laundering "is" can change drastically when new opportunities present themselves. It does need to scale, but if it can be reasonably automated (or delegated to low- or unpaid grunts, like the work-from-home scams), individual transaction size can be quite small, and that may even be preferable.
I sort of flashed back to the scene in Office Space where they try to get the guy selling magazine subscriptions to tell them how to launder money :-).
Everyone knows the first step to laundering money is to open an Italian restaurant :-)
Interesting read. I did not expect online games to be up there. For a lot of games, there really isn't much of a profit to be made, considering that all the chinese gold farmers are competing with one another and making the real money (the exchange rate in MapleStory is awful and you would make more money panhandling). A lot of these methods seem to require a lot of work to clean a little bit of money, though. I would wager that actual drug lords use something a little more clever in practice; after all, that's what they pay their lawyers for.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 42.7 ms ] threadLaundering is when I can justify to the IRS that my fund are earned legitimated eg. no criminal activity AND I paid my taxes on it.
Money laundering is when several fake corporations established and begin transfering shitpiles of botnet and card money from Baltic states to "isles" to such an extent that whole countries are scared of opening accounts for "internet startups" after that.
However, is it far fetched to think illicit funds might finance the development of a virtual economy, in a mobile game perhaps, that could be used to launder money? Seems theres a need for fraud detection practices to extend into virtual economies as well.
I don't think so.. The lure is that it can be fast and automated, and that using new technology will help avoiding the feds.
The thing is, what criminal money laundering "is" can change drastically when new opportunities present themselves. It does need to scale, but if it can be reasonably automated (or delegated to low- or unpaid grunts, like the work-from-home scams), individual transaction size can be quite small, and that may even be preferable.
Everyone knows the first step to laundering money is to open an Italian restaurant :-)