Inside the crazy world of drug money laundering in the new book ‘Rinsed’

In “Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World’s Deadliest Crooks” (Penguin Business), Geoff White asks: What would you do with sudden wealth if it came from a source you couldn’t admit? “You’re faced with an agonizing dilemma,” he writes. “How do you enjoy your vast amounts of money but hide its origins?”

The answer is money laundering, and in “Rinsed,” White reveals how the symbiotic relationship between technology and money laundering keeps criminals one step ahead of arrest. “Technologists have a remarkable habit of creating innovations that inadvertently have the very features that money launderers crave,” White writes.

In ‘Rinsed’, White reveals the three stages of money laundering, beginning with ‘placement’ in existing financial systems, then ‘layering’ where it is mixed with legitimate money, and finally, new availability.

“Money laundering is changing its history,” White explains.

Technology has provided money launderers with ‘rocket boosters’.

Numerous examples are cited, from the Nigerian ‘Yahoo Boys’ (so called because of the company’s free email accounts) to the digital platform Hydra (the dark web’s ‘eBay or Amazon’), showing that the explosion in cybercrime is making it easier to move money.

And it’s getting more sophisticated, as the $625 million crypto heist from Singaporean gaming company Sky Mavis in 2022 demonstrates. “What made it more sinister was that the technology used to launder the crypto resembled a self-driving car: an autonomous blender with no controlling owner,” White writes.

“It was the perfect technocratic crime.”

With every digital development comes new opportunities for fraudsters – especially when there’s little initial investment required. As one police officer tells White, “If you were going to distribute cocaine, you’d have to buy that cocaine from another smuggler and you’d have to put up the money. What’s your upfront for fraud?”

“The product you are selling is bullshit: cheap, abundant, infinite.”

In that regard, ‘Rinsed’ predicts difficult times.

“There’s an old saying, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,'” White adds. “It’s usually couched in positive terms… but in money laundering, it offers a dark vision of the future. The better these launderers get, the more crime of all kinds becomes possible.