Musty Money (Night's Black Agents)

I've been reading a lot about money laundering (yes, I have a day job, shocker, I know) and this little gem from The Bermuda Monetary Authority's Financial Intelligence Agency report Q3 2018 leapt out at me:

Three Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) were filed on the suspect activity of two Bermudians, who were on financial assistance at the time. Over a period of two weeks, the two Subjects attended the agency with a stack of “very bad and musty smelling BMD $20 bank notes”. The teller described that the notes had the appearance of being stored in a humid area. The stack of notes amounted to BMD$2,500.00 each visit. During the first visit, the Subject completed a Customer Detail Form, and provided a driver’s license as proof of identification. The agency accepted the notes and advised the first Subject that a cheque would be ready in five business days.

Five business days later, the first Subject returned to the agency where again a stack of musty smelling BMD$20 notes was produced in the same condition, which amounted to BMD$950.00. The first Subject received two cheques from the agency for the value of the damaged notes submitted. The notes tendered by the first Subject were then destroyed by the agency. This incident was closely followed by a second Bermudian, who also produced damaged BMD$100 notes of the same description for exchange.

The reasons for suspicion that were identified were as follows:

• It is known that gangs in Bermuda keep their proceeds of crime in cash and typically bury them until they are needed to fund further criminal conduct.
• The timing of these transactions along with the similarity in nominal value and description of the notes suggests that these transactions deal with cash from the same source, which is likely criminal.

Breaking Bad, Sony

When money laundering rears its ugly head in fiction, it's usually somewhere in the millions or squillions and some minor character speaks knowledgeably about placement, layering and so on. Sometimes shell companies and elaborate corporate structures are invoked, and people whisper about exotic, sun-soaked money laundering havens like Delaware, South Dakota and Alaska. 

However, as the FIA article points out, money laundering can happen on the micro as well as macro level. Never mind the squillions; what about the hundreds, the thousands? How do you prove that the wodge of cash you want to deposit is yours?

It's all the more important as banks and financial institutions, whether it's Bank of America or PayPal, conduct most if not all of their business electronically, and vendors accommodate them by introducing new practices that all but eliminate cash from the system. Tap your card against the terminal, and thank you for your patronage. 

Imagine trying to buy a car, even second-hand, with cash alone. It'd have to be a junker with more miles on it than God before anyone even considered taking cash-only. 

Imagine how many red flags you'd set off if you tried.

Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock

Time was stacks of musty cash meant someone found treasure, and quite often  worthless Confederate loot. Scooby Doo pulled off that old chestnut back in the 1970s, Chester Himes tried it, and there've been plenty of pulp writers who did the same. Dirt-smeared stacks of cash hidden in someone's basement often have an unusual history, or - as happened in the Bermuda example - are too damaged to be used as cash, which presents its own problems.

OK, let's start talking about gamification. 

Here we have a situation where a low-power Node, street-level most likely, has accumulated a chunk of cash it can't easily spend. Maybe it's ordinary currency, maybe it's out-of-date, maybe it's antique. I'm not sure what you'd do with a stack of French Francs, for instance, now the Euro's a thing; I think I'm right in saying the last date of exchange was a while ago. Presumably, if you found a suitcase full of granny's retirement fund in the attic and wanted to spend it, you can still hand over old Francs for new Euro, but I've no idea how you'd do that. Nor, I suspect, does your average street-level Node.

But it wants to spend that cash, so it tries to exchange it at a bank or credit union.

Red Flag

The agents, trawling for information that might lead to the next link in the chain, discover a suspicious activity report in the data they harvested from [insert financial institution here]. Seems that someone's been trying to bank odd-smelling notes in unusual amounts, and this someone's hit the official radar before, for a slightly different crime: robbing a blood bank. What's going on here?

Option One: the man with the money stole the cash from a Level One Node. This hopeless wretch - someone roughly on a par with the Dracula Dossier's Madman - has been shadowing the Node for some time, as they know it's linked to the Conspiracy and there's nothing this poor deluded soul likes better than vampires. Tracking him down will get the agents some useful intel about the Node.

Option Two: the woman exchanging the cash is one of several mules this Level One Node uses to launder its cash. It isn't a perfect system; in fact it's a bloody awful system, as proven by the fact that they have to use a petty criminal to launder their loot. However their only other option is to stash the money in their mattress, and that won't work forever. 

Option Three: the person exchanging the cash is a vampire hunter/Dracula Dossier Legacy or similar, who found it while following up other leads. They're possibly a little naïve when it comes to money matters but they aren't vampire-friendly; quite the reverse. However, the Node knows the cash is missing and has a pretty good idea who has it, so unless the agents intervene this potential friendly could find themselves in deep trouble.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!