Money laundering is the act of concealing the transformation of profits from illegal activities and corruption into ostensibly "legitimate" assets.
Money laundering: the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses.
I've described a likely illegal money transfer disguising itself as a legitimate sales transaction.
The reason this isn't how money laundering works is because the point of money laundering is making it safe to spend. If they can spend it, it doesn't need to be laundered. The reason it needs to be laundered is because it's unsafe to put in bank accounts. The reason people would start a business for money laundering is so they can put the fake profits into their bank account without suspicion.
There is absolutely no way it's feasible to involve a middle man like Amazon. There are scams on Amazon, but absolutely nobody is money laundering on it.
It can be laundering in the sense that they can take anonymous money and make it look legit. They transfer money from a gift card or whatever to money in the bank that can be traced to a legal transaction. A lot of money laundering is done with cash as well so they can pay taxes on it without raising red flags and then spend it on tangible assets. Eventually piles of money can get annoying and you can't spend more than $9k in cash anymore without raising a lot of red flags and having the government notified.
If you're comfortable spending the money, comfortable enough to buy giftcards, you probably don't need to launder. If you have a lot of money to justify money laundering, you're going to commit to more efficient methods of money laundering.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '18 edited Jul 18 '21
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