> Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee this morning, but I don't understand the scenario you're describing. Could you elaborate?
Beth has dirty money. Bob, a friend of Beth’s, “rents” her car. (There is no car. Maybe Bob pays Beth over Turo and then Beth gives Bob the dirty cash.) Beth now has the appearance of legitimate income.
Still not detailed enough and doesn't make any sense.
Does Beth have cash? Is it in a bank account? You can't use cash on Turo from what I understand. If money is in bank account, it won't be "dirty". So, how can Beth pay for a rental on Turo?
As someone already commented, there is nothing special about Turo, you could just set up an ecommerce store and ship rocks around.
> there is nothing special about Turo, you could just set up an ecommerce store and ship rocks around
Your analogy is correct. These serve similar functions. It’s just easier to pretend to rent a car than it is to ship rocks. (I disagree with OP about there being massive money laundering on Turo.)
1) How is it "dirty" money when it is in the bank account? It is accounted for. Your tax ID / EIN is associated with the bank account and it is reported to IRS.
2) The ecommerce rock-shipping company would need to take cash and have to deposit in a checking account to be able to successfully launder money. So at this point, it cannot be an "ecommerce" company. It would need to be a hot-dog stand. Right?
I think the parent comment has this wrong. This isn’t about laundering a big pile of dirty cash into a pile of clean cash. It’s more a way for black markets to take credit cards by “renting” cars. But it only works up to a small scale and for individual customers.
It still seems risky for those involved because there is a paper trail linking the buyer and seller in the case the buyer gets busted.
But Bob will have to deposit this dirty cash at some point. With enough cash, it’ll raise alarm bells unless Beth has A LOT of friends who can deposit $600 each.
Often it's more for tax evasion. Beth pays for cars as a business expense.
Bob just happens to have the Cayman Islands as the business location.
Money flows from U.S. business as a deductible expense, to the location out of the IRS's reach.
Or there isn't one Beth but lots of people with dodgy credit cards from banks in weird places. Those card holders indeed get their money in suitcases full of folding money, pay for their "rentals" and so the money flows into legitimate commerce. Bob of course pays for this.
> Bob will have to deposit this dirty cash at some point
This is a layering mechanism, designed to obfuscate and distribute dirty cash. There may be many Bobs. Or Bob may be fine running cash to Mexico whereas Beth is not; this lets Bob sell that service to Beth.
(I’m also not sure how much Turo requires rentals be settled through its platform. If it allows off-platform billing and settling, there is no need to reimburse with dirty cash.)
The whole point of money laundering is to get criminal money into the banking system. Once it’s in the banking system you’re done. That’s why strip clubs and other cash heavy businesses are used to mix it all in.
I'unno, being a car dealer is a pretty dodgy line of work.
A huge barrier to wide adoption of BEVs is because dealers won't sell them because BEVs have far lower vehicle service requirements (no oil changes, no 20,000mi servicing, etc) which are normally half their revenue stream. Car dealers, en-masse, are happy to see the world burn than do-their-part and transition the world away from fossil-fuel cars simply due to their bottom-line.
Instead of paying for what the dealer is selling you rent his car for the same amount of money. You don't actually drive it (so it costs the dealer nothing in depreciation) but now the dealer has the appearance of a legitimate income stream.
