What is Money Laundering?

People love a good crime narrative. The spectrum of crime is broad and some people find their own niche to specialize in; sometimes as a spectator and other times as a participant. Money Laundering should be on the forefront of any real criminal's mind since they would need to clean all of their illicit money in order to do anything substantial with it. That is a problem that many real criminals have had to face and some popular fictitious ones as well.

There are several different strategies when it comes to laundering money and there are some shows that do a good job of simplifying those techniques. Breaking Bad, Ozark, and even The Wolf of Wall Street all have scenes that break down how to launder money. Breaking Bad and Ozark used ‘Smurfs’ and ‘Mules’ to launder their money through businesses while The Wolf of Wall Street used ‘Mules’ to transfer large sums of cash to banks in Switzerland. People who study money laundering for a living and actively work to prevent it sing the praises of certain Hollywood shows for their accurate depictions of the crime.

Cleaning dirty money is easier said than done and appears to require the type of mind that pays very close attention to the little details. All it takes is a few too many slip-ups and the IRS or FBI will come knocking at your door which is something no one wants.

What are your thoughts on money laundering and how it is depicted in pop culture? Are you surprised when you hear about real life examples? Let us know in the comments and thank you for watching!

Written by: Nathan Council
Narrated by: Nathan Council
Edited by: Federico Rossi
For copyright matters please contact us at: legal@valnetinc.com

Chapters:

00:00 Intro
00:12 What is Money Laundering?
03:34 Real Life Examples of Money Laundering
06:31 Money Laundering in Pop Culture
09:41 Outro

Видео What is Money Laundering? канала TheRichest