A BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY FOR LAUNDRYMEN

 

Holidays are strange for me, as I have spent some of them in places not seen by most people; on a battlefield, or locked down in a Federal Prison, or a county jail literally in the middle of a swamp. While those experiences give rise to some interesting stories, holidays spent as a active money launderer are definitely worth a close look on this blog.

First of all, laundrymen live (and die) by the rule that the best time to move dirty money ios when the best and most experienced compliance officers at a bank are off on holiday; you then only have to contend with lower level compliance staff, some of whom are inevitably undertrained, and will probably miss your artful advanced tradecraft. In some cases, all the senior compliance staff are off duty, which makes your dirty job easier to accomplish. I wonder why most banks continue to expose themselves this way.

The last business day before a national holiday is prime for moving the proceeds of crime; people, even those on duty, are often distracted or disinterested, or angry that they did not get  those days off to be with family. it all adds up to increased opportunities for a successful operation. I spent some of those holidays in remote offshore tax haven abroad, and I am sure you can guess what I was doing; Think about it.

Also, some smart money launderers combine business with pleasure on holidays, using trips abroad, ostensibly holiday travel, to quickly and covertly move money while at a resort that just happens to be in a hax haven. After all, even law enforcement investigating you or your narco-clients is busy taking off vacation time, lest they lose it through annual expiration of those precious free days, so you aren't going to be surveilled that week.

However, on a emotional note, holidays for laundrymen also are the time when they take stock of their escapes to date, from the long arm of the law, and wonder aloud whether the next Christman will be spent in some cold Federal Prison, far from their  sunny base of operations. Even to the successful money launderer, holidays are bittersweet, given their acceptance of the fact that, sooner or later,, they are going to get caught, usually through the actions of a client. It's not a happy time for those who are realists. There are no happy endings.