The problem with "money laundering" is that its theory and its operation are the inverse of one another.
The theory is supposed to be that you make it illegal to conceal the source of money that is the proceeds of a crime, so you can prosecute criminals for money laundering even if you couldn't prove the original crime. Which, to begin with, is pretty sus. Basically an attempt to end run around the government satisfying its burden of proof for the underlying crime.
But that also doesn't work. The criminals just set up a legitimate business as a front, claim the money came from there and the only way to prove otherwise is to uncover the original crime. So in practice money laundering is overwhelmingly charged in one of two cases.
One, they already proved the original crime and tack on a money laundering charge which is pointlessly redundant because those criminals were already caught. Two, you get some innocent people who -- unlike career criminals -- don't understand how money laundering laws work, so even though they were doing nothing wrong, they do something which is technically money laundering (because the rules criminalize innocuous and common behavior), or trigger the false positive AI nonsense, and then get charged with money laundering or booted out of the banking system.
Meanwhile large criminal organizations know how to make their transactions look like innocent transactions and then the government yells at banks for not catching them, even though the banks have no real way to do that because the criminal organizations made their transactions look like innocent transactions.
This is a dumb law that does more harm than good. Just get rid of it and charge the criminals with their actual crimes.
The theory is supposed to be that you make it illegal to conceal the source of money that is the proceeds of a crime, so you can prosecute criminals for money laundering even if you couldn't prove the original crime. Which, to begin with, is pretty sus. Basically an attempt to end run around the government satisfying its burden of proof for the underlying crime.
But that also doesn't work. The criminals just set up a legitimate business as a front, claim the money came from there and the only way to prove otherwise is to uncover the original crime. So in practice money laundering is overwhelmingly charged in one of two cases.
One, they already proved the original crime and tack on a money laundering charge which is pointlessly redundant because those criminals were already caught. Two, you get some innocent people who -- unlike career criminals -- don't understand how money laundering laws work, so even though they were doing nothing wrong, they do something which is technically money laundering (because the rules criminalize innocuous and common behavior), or trigger the false positive AI nonsense, and then get charged with money laundering or booted out of the banking system.
Meanwhile large criminal organizations know how to make their transactions look like innocent transactions and then the government yells at banks for not catching them, even though the banks have no real way to do that because the criminal organizations made their transactions look like innocent transactions.
This is a dumb law that does more harm than good. Just get rid of it and charge the criminals with their actual crimes.