How to launder money: a guide.

It is tax season.

You are watching the mail for your Social Security statement, your bank and brokerage reports, your 1099s, and the confirmation letters from nonprofit organizations verifying your charitable gifts.

The USA had a well-founded reputation for voluntary tax compliance. It was the law. The IRS had means to check up on you. And paying one's taxes was a cultural norm, the legal, patriotic thing for good Americans to do.

President Trump is eroding that public trust by flagrant self-serving grift: free planes, getting billion-dollar investments in his imaginary crypto coins, and his own tax returns that showed he paid exactly $750 in total taxes while living and spending like a billionaire. This week he adds a claim for a $10 billion settlement from his own IRS appointees, a settlement that will come to him tax free, which he can then publicly give away in an act of self-declared "charity." That would give him charitable deductions for use in eliminating billions of dollars in taxes on any taxable income his businesses generate that he could not hide in some other way. Clever! So generous!

In a 2016 debate, Hillary Clinton challenged him for his history of not paying taxes. Trump did not disagree. Instead, he explained: "I'm smart."

Trump encourages and enables a new norm for filing an honest tax return: Only saps pay taxes. He has fired the IRS auditors who audit complicated returns.

College classmate Erich Almasy's guest post is a mix of serious and satire. I consider it a version of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." It is a commentary on the Trump grift and loopholes to hide money that Trump has inserted into the law. Erich does it in the form of instructions on how to be just as cynical, dishonest, and unpatriotic as Trump. Erich and his wife Cynthia Blanton, also a classmate, live in San Miguel de Allande, in Mexico.

Almasy

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Money Laundering

Do you have an illegal business somewhere in the world that generates a lot of cash? Need to find a place to put it where it can earn even greater Ill-gotten gains? I have just the place for you. It’s called the United States.

"What?" you say. How can that be? Isn’t the United States a country of laws? Doesn’t the FBI force Swiss banks to reveal miscreants like Bernie Madoff? Doesn’t the Treasury Department require a filing by banks of any suspicious transactions involving over $10,000 in cash? Isn’t the DEA going after drug cartels and dealers who amass huge amounts of cash? Hasn’t the United States Congress placed sanctions on Russian oligarchs? Didn’t the U.S. discontinue denominations over $500 in 1969? Well, yes, but that hasn’t stopped any and all of these people from laundering money here in the good old United States. How, you ask? Let me count the ways.

*** 1. Real Estate: Until the Biden administration, real estate transactions in the United States did not require disclosure of the beneficial owner. They could be bought by numbered or shell corporations. One estimate claimed that more than 1,300 (over 20 percent) of all the Trump Organization’s condos were purchased this way. In 2017, USA Today reported that more than 70 percent of Trump properties sold in the previous twelve months went to limited-liability companies, whose owners’ names were not disclosed. 

The United States was not the only country with this situation. In Canada, specifically British Columbia, nearly 40 percent of property in Vancouver had no listed owner other than a company. A new publicly searchable database established under the Land Owner Transparency Act (LOTA) ended this opacity. However, in the United States, the Corporate Transparency Act, which does the same, was suspended by the Trump Treasury Department in March 2025. Trump also canceled the Anti-Money Laundering rules that required real estate professionals to report on all-cash transactions involving legal entities or trusts. So, it is safe to park your illegal cash in real estate again. 

*** 2. Cryptocurrency: Technically, purchasing crypto is not anonymous but “pseudonymous” since all transactions are supposed to be recorded on a public blockchain ledger that could theoretically be traced to a bank account or name. Major platforms, such as Coinbase and Robinhood, even have KYC (Know Your Customer) rules. However, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) often use Uniswap or PancakeSwap, which do not require user accounts. Bitcoin can be purchased anonymously through ATMs. P2P (Person-to-Person) marketplaces offer direct purchases with no-name transactions. Privacy coins are cryptocurrencies designed to be anonymous. The large number of crypto transactions that appear to be made through the Tor browser on the dark web suggests a desire to mask and launder funds. The vast majority of respected economists believe that crypto’s sole purpose is to launder money. But, hey its legal. I know this because Trump, his sons, and his administration say so.

*** 3. Venture Capital: Private Equity, and Hedge Funds: Got a spare $20+ million lying around that you don’t want anyone to trace? Just set up a numbered corporation through a bank account in the Channel Islands or in the South Pacific island country Vanuatu, and invest in a private equity fund. By law, private equity funds are not required to disclose their funding sources publicly. Theoretically, they must comply with anti-money laundering (AML) laws, but there are significant loopholes, such as offshore private vehicles, like the one we just set up. Venture capital firms and hedge funds are covered by pretty much the same rules.

With this primer, you can now launder money: Set up a Middle Eastern private equity fund; create your own cryptocurrency fund, coins, and laws; and sell real estate to the Russian Mafia. Just as your favorite politicians do.

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