I really enjoy reading about the investigations that follow any big crypto heist, where they track the stolen money through various exchanges etc. The Swindled podcast just did one about a pretty poor attempt to launder crypto (see Razzlekhan) and Darknet diaries did one on the much more competent (suspected North Korean) heist of eth from Axie Infinity and their various laundering efforts including through Tornado cash. It’s surprisingly transparent in a lot of ways. It seems like stealing the money is often the comparatively easy part, and getting their huge sums out of crypto and into something they can use (while thousands watch the money like hawks) is much harder.
Acquire dirty (criminally-obtained) cash or dirty crypto. You can convert dirty cash into crypto easily by buying peer-to-peer. Deposit this into Wallet A.
Using a different wallet, Wallet B, mint an NFT and put it up for auction. You might consider paying a small sum of money to have it “sponsored” by a B-tier celebrity to make it seem more legitimate.
Using the Wallet A, outbid everyone else and buy the NFT. Pay using the dirty crypto.
Dirty crypto is transferred to Wallet B.
Repeat this process as many times as desired.
In the end, sell the crypto legitimately on a cryptocurrency exchange. Declare the crypto as income and pay tax as appropriate.
If questioned by the authorities, you claim that you mint NFTs and that they were sold genuinely at public auction, purchased by an anonymous buyer.
Crypto is the exact opposite of private. You literally share all your transactions with everyone.
I really enjoy reading about the investigations that follow any big crypto heist, where they track the stolen money through various exchanges etc. The Swindled podcast just did one about a pretty poor attempt to launder crypto (see Razzlekhan) and Darknet diaries did one on the much more competent (suspected North Korean) heist of eth from Axie Infinity and their various laundering efforts including through Tornado cash. It’s surprisingly transparent in a lot of ways. It seems like stealing the money is often the comparatively easy part, and getting their huge sums out of crypto and into something they can use (while thousands watch the money like hawks) is much harder.
That, my friends, is what NFT are is perfect at.
“Oh, what, tax authority? No, I didn’t steal this money. I earned it legit by selling my newly-minted monkey NFT to some sucker for 100 ETH.”
That gets your money into crypto, not out of it.
The full scheme works like this—
You go ahead and do that and see how it turns out.