

Laundering Money Online: A review of cybercriminals’ methods - jnand
http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.2368

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juskrey
Honestly speaking, this paper has nothing to do with criminal money
laundering. Just a snapshot of third-grade forum with script kiddies out of
inner circles.

Money laundering is when several fake corporations established and begin
transfering shitpiles of botnet and card money from Baltic states to "isles"
to such an extent that whole countries are scared of opening accounts for
"internet startups" after that.

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jnand
yeah, I just now learned arxiv isn't peer reviewed. Considering magnitude
helps with perspective.

However, is it far fetched to think illicit funds might finance the
development of a virtual economy, in a mobile game perhaps, that could be used
to launder money? Seems theres a need for fraud detection practices to extend
into virtual economies as well.

~~~
gizzlon
_However, is it far fetched to think illicit funds might finance the
development of a virtual economy, in a mobile game perhaps, that could be used
to launder money?_

I don't think so.. The lure is that it can be fast and automated, and that
using new technology will help avoiding the feds.

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ChuckMcM
I sort of flashed back to the scene in Office Space where they try to get the
guy selling magazine subscriptions to tell them how to launder money :-).

Everyone knows the first step to laundering money is to open an Italian
restaurant :-)

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akanet
I especially enjoyed a fraudster's description of his son's profits in World
of Warcraft:

    
    
      In 2006 or 2007 my son sold 80,000 gold to IGE and they paid him $70 per 1000g. That's right, $5,600
      directly to his PayPal account. He got most of the gold through selling as he types this: "aq20 spellbooks
      from guild bank around level 60"

~~~
dcc1
Whats surprising is that PayPal didnt close his account as soon as such a sum
arrived

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yoblin
I think there is some confusion in this paper about laundering vs transferring
money.

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toadi
I think you're correct. The title confused met with the content. It's all
about transferring money from one place to another and a way to cash it out
and use it. It's actually still "black" money because it's not laundered yet.

Laundering is when I can justify to the IRS that my fund are earned
legitimated eg. no criminal activity AND I paid my taxes on it.

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shitlord
Interesting read. I did not expect online games to be up there. For a lot of
games, there really isn't much of a profit to be made, considering that all
the chinese gold farmers are competing with one another and making the _real_
money (the exchange rate in MapleStory is awful and you would make more money
panhandling). A lot of these methods seem to require a _lot_ of work to clean
a little bit of money, though. I would wager that actual drug lords use
something a little more clever in practice; after all, that's what they pay
their lawyers for.

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driverdan
This is chump change. No one needing to launder decent amounts would bother
with these methods. It takes too much work to launder too little money.

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dcc1
When was this written, both Silk Road and Liberty Reserve have been closed
rendering this rather useless

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mikesena
very interesting

