Page 52 - Banking Finance May 2024

ARTICLE

3. Online Gaming Space:
Online games often come with their own digital currencies
and items, which can be traded both in the game and on
outside websites. This has created a big online market where
these virtual goods are bought and sold for real money.
Criminals have seen this as a chance to clean their dirty
money.

Source: //www.chainalysis.com/

It only takes a few seconds to create an account, and this is
free of cost. It is possible to create a large money laundering
scheme with thousands of transfers at a low cost and to
execute it using a computer script.

Due to rapid increases in exchange rates, with some
cryptocurrencies showing 10,000% growth, it is very easy
to justify unexpected wealth through cryptocurrencies.
Source: https://www.amic.eu/online-games-and-money-
laundering/
5. Trade-Based Laundering:
Some common ways they do this include: Trade-based money laundering (TBML) is defined by the
Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as the process of
Buying virtual items with bad money and selling them
camouflaging the proceeds of criminal activity and moving
for clean money on other websites.
money using trade transactions in an effort to cover up their
Using virtual items from games to buy things in the real unauthorized origin or finance activities. In accordance with
world, like weapons or drugs. the FATF, the goal of trade-based money laundering is the
Moving virtual goods between different game accounts movement of money, which the trade transactions enable.
to hide where the items originally came from.
Using virtual items to gamble in games.

4. Cryptocurrency:
Cryptocurrencies are popular with people trying to launder
money because it's hard to trace transactions back to them.
They often use services called crypto tumblers or mixers,
which mix up illegal money with clean money, making it hard
to find out where the money originally came from.

Money laundering using cryptocurrencies follows the
general pattern of placement-layering-integration but with
some specific features. Cryptocurrencies are anonymous at
their point of creation therefore the placement stage of the Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trade-based-
money laundering process is often absent. money-laundering-how-prevent-

46 | 2024 | MAY | BANKING FINANCE