#geoffwhite

The author Geoff White is an accomplished true crime author. He has written a new book about money laundering titled "Rinsed." It talks about cryptocurrency and money laundering. In any money laundering operation, there are three distinct stages:

1) Placement: Injecting the hot money into the financial system.

2) Layering: Matching the illegal cash with legal money.

3) Purchasing innocent assets.

    Technology has made money laundering much easier and more scalable. The beauty of digital currencies is not only their anonymity and access to deep global markets. Payments can be sliced up and put into millions of digital wallets. This makes the illegal money very hard to detect and trace.

    Computer programs called mixers come into play. These programs "slosh together" illegal money and legal money. The illegal money laundering operations can be run from anywhere in the world. The "Dark Web" allows criminal organizations to form alliances and communicate with little interference from law enforcement agencies.

    The result is a large increasingly connected illicit economy. Dark Web marketplaces like the Russian Hydra drug dealing website that is a parody of Amazon and eBay. Nigerian gangs like Black Axe conduct all their illegal scams from this Dark Web. Huge heists are also made possible by the new technology of money laundering. One example is the $625 million heist from Singapore-based Sky Mavis in 2022.

      The authorities are becoming aware of this giant problem. They have not created the technology to counteract these criminal gangs. The message to each of you is to be careful with your financial matters. Vigilance is very important. Any of you who are curious, please get a copy of the book "Rinsed." Here is a link from Amazon: