They are not depositing millions of dollars in cash every day, except at their retail-level subsidiaries - and that amount would be spread over many locations, each making much smaller deposits. That’s where you get cash into the system without leaving a suspicious paper trail - in a large number of small, fake transactions which are (1) reasonably expected to be cash transactions and (2) impossible to verify or trace.
Lydia is laughing because she is an arrogant, self-important ass. Mike wants to make sure that Lydia has a justifiable reason for Madrigal to be paying him. That’s why he insists she change the job description from logistics consultant to security consultant - in case the corporate auditors want to investigate. Lydia is trying to belittle Mike by saying what she will be paying him is too small for the auditors to notice.
Guess what? Mike is right. She is paying him $10k per week; she said that the weekly budget for her operation is (if I remember correctly) $500l-$1M per week. Mike’s “salary” is 1-2% of that - plenty large enough to be on the auditor’s radar. Remember, one of the auditor’s jobs is to look for small discrepancies which might be the sign of malfeasance.
Hector originally wanted to use Gus’s network temporarily, and forcing Gus to do it let Hector swing his dick a bit and show dominance. Hector was angry about the call because using Gus’s network permanently means that Hector isn’t really in charge of his own operation anymore; instead of being an independent operator, he’s really just another distributor for Gus. Formally his status hasn’t changed, but this definitely weakens his position, so he doesn’t want to do it, so he’s still planning to set up his own operation.
Nacho doesn’t have to guess at what Hector wants - Hector said they’re going to use Nacho’s dad, and hasn’t said that he’s changed his mind, so either the plan goes on or Nacho defies him directly, which will lead to Nacho’s death.
I’d go a little farther than that - I think that Howard really dislikes Jimmy now and thinks he’s dishonest scum, it just doesn’t rise to anything that I’d call ‘hatred’. He wants nothing to do with Jimmy and is annoyed that Jimmy is coming around trying to manipulate him, but he doesn’t actually want to do anything against Jimmy. He’s not planning to mess with Jimmy’s share of the settlement, he’s not not planning to try to get Jimmy disbarred, he’s not going to actively push people away from Jimmy’s practice when it starts back, and so on.
If he was trying to cover sizes 6 to 10.5 including half sizes, which seems like a reasonable range to me, that would be 10 boxes of shoes, which looks like about like what he had.
I also noticed that Kim was smart enough to wear pants and flat-soled boots for her trip to the desert. She would have had a much more difficult time if she did the heels and skirt look. Funny thing I heard in an interview - they actually do the filming in winter, and it gets COLD in the desert; she commented that it was hard to keep from shivering and teeth chattering during those scenes.
Chuck’s house won’t burn down. The ‘lantern’ title is metaphorical and won’t get used so directly. Chuck probably does burn himself out (not literally) with all of his ‘look at me using an immersion blender’ stunts.
Chuck, Irene, or both end up either dead or in the hospital in bad shape.
Hamlin rejects Chuck’s ‘we can fix this with a handshake’ offer, he’s going to either fight Chuck or figured out a way to come up with the cash.
Decent odds that Howard and Jimmy end up doing something against Chuck. Would love to see a scene like “I’m sorry I called you Gollum.” “Well, I called you a pigfucker, so I guess we’re even.”
Kim leaves the partnership and semi-relationship with Jimmy, quite possibly while he’s getting the Sandpiper payout.
Chuck probably wrote Jimmy out of his will back when he changed the locks, if he dies his money is likely going to his ex-wife or a charity of some sort.
Yeah - a good part of many types of lawyering involves working with folk you do not respect, like, or believe to be honest. Just this morning, for example…
Laundering is not as simple as just writing up extra fake sales then depositing the drug money as if it vame from customers. I would think any competent auditor would check to make sure that increases in sales are matched by an equivalent increase in inventory costs. If you order 5,000 chickens per month, and then your sales of chicken go up by 20%, there had better be an increase of 1000 chickens in your supply chain. A large increase in sales should accompany an increase in staffing costs, etc. So large scale money laundering might have to include multiple companies, faking receipt of goods, etc.
In Gus’s case, his supply is also his drug source, so he can probably fake that out. But a really diligent auditor could find all sorts of other discrepancies like that. No increase in the use of water to wash 20% more dishes, etc.
That’s probably why Gus works so hard to stay far enough below the radar that there will never be a full forensic audit. He can probably withstand a casual IRS audit looking for tax compliance, but if he became a suspect in money laundering and a full criminal audit was done, it would be very hard to hide the shenanigans.
The money laundering scheme that can withstand detailed scrutiny has not been invented yet. At least not without bought off auditors or regulators, or at least sympathetic ones.
I wonder if Madrigal has bought off the local IRS auditors.
I think Kim is out of action as a lawyer and has to drop the new case (all the papers went flying too). She’s FUBAR’d for a while and won’t be able to keep up her end of the office rent. Jimmy’s rolling in the cash for now, but like Gift of the Maji, it won’t matter much.
I was kind of making a joke, I’m sure the partnership agreement has language to handle the death of one of the partners. Plus the only way Jimmy would inherit would be if Chuck dies intestate, I can’t see any time in their mutual history where he would have left anything to Jimmy outside of a trust fund.
I think the partnership agreement is probably worded to give Chuck much more power than it would be if they were drafting it ‘today’. At the time they created the firm it was just two guys in a small office, and they probably made a fairly simple buyout clause without really considering ‘what if we’re a multi-million dollar entity with a hundred employees?’.
I had the same thought a while back when I took my son to a birthday party at a place with trampolines and foam pits. You pay $20 at the door of an old warehouse and go jump around for two hours and then leave.
I don’t know about that. She was able to walk out of the car after the crash, and all we see in the preview is a cast on her arm. She might just need a night in the hospital to be sure there’s no concussion complications, plus the cast on a broken arm. If that’s the case, she can be back to work in a couple of days, though she might need someone to take dictation for a few weeks (which she can certainly afford if she’s still working for MV). It will be even easier if she does hire someone to help out with the legal work, and she was interviewing people earlier in the season. The oil case can still use her solution - they may have another lawyer finalize the deal, but it’s possible that they will appreciate her work and see the accident as just something that happened (the case will be over since it’s a one-shot, but she might still be a ‘miracle worker’).
It’s certainly not impossible that she is out of action for a while, but it doesn’t have to be the case from the injuries they’ve shown, and I could definitely see them deciding to have her able to work but not wanting to semi-partner with Jimmy any more.
