How Scammers Launder Money and Get Away With It

Imagine you’re a scammer, cheating people out of their life savings. You need a way to get money out of countries around the world. You need a matchmaker.
A matchmaker is a trusted intermediary who will shepherd your loot home. A good matchmaker has a worldwide network of people, known as mules, who can move money within hours.
The money mule can be a person or a shell company that controls a local bank account or a cryptocurrency wallet.
Once you find a matchmaker, he will deposit money into escrow, essentially ensuring he won’t run away with your money along the you are ready to start your scam.
Let us say that you’ve tricked someone into sending you $40,000.
Step 1: You, the scam boss, cut a deal with a matchmaker. For a U.S. scam, the matchmaker typically demands 15 percent of the proceeds for himself and his mules.
Step 2: Your matchmaker finds the right mules for the job, and gets you a deal.
Step 3: The matchmaker sends you the mule’s bank account or crypto wallet details. You send that information to your victim.
Step 4: Your victim sends $40,000 to your money mule’s account.
Step 5: The mule moves the money from one account to another account and eventually converts it to cryptocurrency.
Step 6: Finally, the mule takes a cut for his services and sends the rest to the matchmaker. The matchmaker pays himself, and gives you $34,000.