Crooks opt for Monero as crypto of choice to launder ill-gotten gains Crooks are increasingly turning to Monero over Bitcoin, according to a new study on the economics of cybercrime. "Platforms like Monero are designed to be truly anonymous, and tumbler services like CoinJoin can [further] obscure transaction origins," said Dr Mike McGuire, senior lecturer in criminology at Surrey University and …
Criminals, at least the ones with functioning grey matter, know they can not use the same MO including money laundering methods forever but most try to outwit the flatfeet. The fact that posts like this mention several of the better known techniques means there is a general awareness about the problem by those who trying to stop the money laundering.
of course there are honest uses for BC, like a son abroad trying to beat corrupt failed-nation regulations to send money for mom's medical needs, I know all about that. Besides something like it, "success" of these artificial, VERY fiat currencies ("lookit, I made [fiat] money ex nihilo!") has been due to laundering, other explanations not very believable. (of course, people trying to make money out of nothing also help, sort of a lottery thing I guess. It is said that Mr. Ponzi was being handed money "to invest" by people even as he was being carted to prison)
How on God's green Earth are they using Minecraft to launder money ? Is there some wacky diamond trade that is a front for that ? Or do they actually have a dedicated private Minecraft server where they meet and discuss things ?
I just don't get it. Minecraft has no in-game economy, there is no pseudocurrency value attached to a wooden axe vs a stone axe. The only "economy" is the villagers, and they demand a specific item in a specific quantity to exchange for a specific item - and that is independant of the number of gamers on the server.
Tacking a currency of any kind onto that is a totally arbitrary thing.
World of Warcraft is totally different because you gather gold as currency with which you can purchase in-game items. Cue the gold farmers and the international market for real currency against WoW gold. Minecraft has gold, but no currency. You gather gold because it is a component of things you might want to build, not for any in-game value of it.
On top of that, there is no international market available because Minecraft servers have no connnection between them, so there is no possibility of, say, "farming" (wrong term, I know) gold on a server in the US and sending that gold to another server. Each server is in its own universe, unlike WoW.
I'd really like an explanation on how they made that work for them.
Private servers and paypal accounts.
Really, any game that allows digital bits and bobs to she shifted from player A to player B can be used that way. The game is simply used as a token-exchange system, with the server admin as the broker. Minecraft has the advantage that there are a lot types of resources, which can easily be adjusted by the admin(s), so it's pretty versatile as a system.
And as with all things coded, you'll have a damned time proving that stack of chickens represents [X], if you don't have access to the codebook.
Additionally, there are a *lot* of legitimate private Minecraft servers... Easy to hide in the forest.
Some of the larger minecraft servers allow you to buy in-game items which helps fund the money cost of hosting the server etc. Some obviously make a profit, but frankly many probably put in many hours per month running them anyway.
I'm not entirely sure how you'd exploit this without the server owner or delegated admin users permission and knowledge though, it'd be far harder than using WoW etc.
Tell Paypal you are an online/app based game provider
set your store out with items x tokens for £5 £10 £15 etc and spread the payments around the mid point (cost/convienience) and start small and ramp up.
looks perfectly normal from a payment provider point of view, and bots can make these transactions with little effort, especially if you use your ill gotten gains to purchase more PayPal accounts to rpelicate the growth in subscribers.
All of these are small players when real money laundering is done in billions at a time and every globally major bank is participating, through other banks in tax havens. Malta is even famous of this: Estimated 90% of their monetary traffic is money laundering, hundreds of billions per year.
It is very profitable for bank and really big banks are basically outside of laws, they don't apply when you own president and half (all?) of the Congress.
Remember Goldman Sachs and 1 billion to Clinton? That was a payment for immunity, basically. That failed so they paid Trump too, no problem, and Trump named two G&S managers to his administation. Guarantees that G&S will never be prosecuted for money laundering.
And that's how you do it in large scale.
"South Korean police arresting a gang transferring $38m" ... a drop in an ocean and big players use their own bank/banking system, much easier that way and no questions asked.
Old meme of a criminal with suitcase full of cash is totally outdated, that's not the way it's done in civilized world. You put the money in your bank and the bank whitewashes it in two minutes with >90% return.
Of course keeping a bank costs money but you've plenty of money and once it rolls, it's very profitable compared to old methods.
Many minecraft servers have real money purchases available for members, they are not in-game though - you pay for better access, private worlds, or whatever. Any business where there is no physical object purchased/transferred is easier to use for laundering since there's no inventory trail to follow.
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