Playing Baccarat apparently

>For someone supposed to be laundering millions of dollars in stolen funds, with investigators from three countries scrambling to track the money, Ding Zhize was a surprisingly unhurried man. He’d brought a dozen or so high rollers from *China to play in the glitzy VIP room in MetroManila’s Solaire casino. The game was baccarat. It was late February 2016—still high season for Asian casinos, thanks to the Lunar New Year holiday*—and Ding had been here for days. As red-shirted dealers laid down hand after hand, *gamblers smoked Double Happiness cigarettes and helped *themselves to an endless supply of mineral water, lemon tea, and Hennessy XO cognac. The chips they played in a steady stream were valid only in that room. The most valuable ones were *rectangular plaques worth $20,000.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...est-cyberheist

It seems like a pretty good trick. Find a couple of schmucks with a gambling problem, put the screws to them, wire them some ridiculous amount of stolen money, then let them gamble with your friends. The gamblers eventually end up rotting in a Chinese prison, but the money they lost is untouchable.

The real genius is hacking a central bank to make the money appear out of thin air in the first place.

Fascinating story. Thanks for the link.

Endless supplies of mineral water has to be one of the most appealing aspects of risking your freedom to get into the money laundering game

"helped *themselves to an endless supply of mineral water, lemon tea, and Hennessy XO cognac."

This is one of my favorite sentences ever.

"In August 2016, Yan says, police, again from Xiamen, came to the compound and took Gao away to a detention center in Ding’s home region. When she asked what she could do to get him out, one of the cops said, “Don’t bother calling a lawyer.”"

China is a scary place lol

Have we just somehow stepped into The Iron Fist?

Not as scary if you don't do what they did.

I dont understand money laundering at all. Arent you suppose to eventually be able to spend the money freely at some point? How can that happen if you're trying to launder it through baccarat. Sounds more likely you're losing it.

I believe the premise is that the stolen money is traceable and worth $0. If you launder it, in this case, via a casino game, you pay a percentage to the casino in the form of rake/house edge on the games. Hence why baccarat was chosen, it has a very low house edge. Now, other people have won the stolen money and/or the original person has turned it over enough that he can take it in the form of a nice clean check from the casino. So yea, the final amount retrieved from the casino is less than what was put in, but it's a trivial "tax" and the new money is clean as a whistle. Then he can pay taxes on it if necessary in his country, or not (in most countries) and freely spend the money he has "won" from the casino.

This is an old racket.

--
Kahn

Why would a casino game accept the stolen money if it's traceable?

...Because they don't know that it's stolen -__-

lol

not sure if they will oppose much unless they are 100% certain where the oney comes from (which they will never know)

If they can fool the casinos, why can't they fool the open market?