Five facts about money laundering

There's a lot of dirty money out there, and an entire underground industry dedicated to scrubbing it clean. Check out these top 5 facts about money laundering.

5. Money laundering has three basic steps

Firstly you have to place dirty money in a financial system. Next comes layering, where the launderer hides their tracks through an intricate series of techniques that obscure the money's history in the event of an audit.

Finally, it's the integration stage. This is where dirty money has been cleaned and may be freely used to purchase whatever you like!

4. There are multiple placement strategies

One of the favourite methods is the 'blending of funds'. This strategy involves purchasing a business and subtly blending illegal funds into the daily balance sheet over a long period of time. Another popular placement strategy is 'smurfing'.

This is where 'smurfs' make deposits in multiple bank accounts to avoid suspicion.Finally there's bank complicity - where crooked bankers do all the work for you! They make the illegally obtained money legitimate through a series of financial gymnastics.

3. Money laundering is a huge problem for the economy

By nature of its secrecy it's difficult to know exactly how much money is being illegally laundered but the UN's office on drugs and crime estimates anywhere between $800 billion to $2 trillion enters the world economy on a yearly basis.

2. You can launder money from home in your spare time

It's true, you can earn as much as $10,000 a month working from home. All you need to do is transfer money from individual to individual without asking any questions... which is exactly what money laundering is.

But, ignorance is rarely bliss in these kind of job scams and people who get caught up in online money laundering schemes may be prosecuted if they don't take the time to ask reasonable questions about the propositions.

1. Digital currencies are likely to be the future of money laundering

Laundering techniques are constantly evolving and the rise of digital technology has ensured this to be especially true. In 2009 Bitcoin was introduced and gave widespread attention to digital currency for the first time in history. The main difference is that Bitcoin has no centralised authority