I’m worried about who is sending this to me, and why. And when they will want it back. Or want something in exchange.
I start by contacting my lawyer, and asking them to recommend the right kind of lawyer to help me navigate this. I probably put the money in an escrow account. I probably keep the envelopes, the letters, and also share photographs of them with my laywer. But I follow the advice of a lawyer.
This seems like a good idea, too. It also would give you some protection against the mob offing you when you don’t do whatever it is they want you to do. They don’t really like to be embarassed in public. I want it all out in the open, and I want to make sure it’s really easy to give it back.
Also, this is so weird that if you end up indicted for something monetary, and you claim this is what happened, I don’t believe you. You better have damn good proof, because juror-me will believe almost any story the prosecutor makes up before I believe this story.
Except now I have people trying to intercept/break into my mail, harassing me to give them money, phonies claiming they sent the cash and want it back, and what not. I think going public like this is asking for trouble.
If the money keeps coming eventually it’ll turn into a very large amount. Too much to spend just on Moon Pies and penny whistles.
Seriously. A milti-millionaire/billionaire who really had it out for me could completely fuck up my life doing something like this. It could even be a lesser amount and it would have their desired effect.
Anonymous donations to charity. Church. Generous tips. Giving it out to family. Feel free to try me. I’m reasonably certain I can find a way to stay under the radar. If worse comes to worst, I can always dispose of it. Besides a million dollars doesn’t take up that much space unless it’s being sent to me as ones or something, and even that’s not that bad (like a waist high pallet of singles.) So someone’s gonna have to be sending some huge amounts of money daily before that’s a problem. I suppose at that point maybe the post office will notice. Hmm. Maybe have to think about my plan.
Once a month, you take $5000 of it, put it in a padded envelope addressed to A. Random Doper with a terse note, and send that envelope in another package to Some Other Doper, asking them kindly to drop it in the mail in their fair city…
Much of your advice seems reasonable, but this is not necessary. Lawyers have an implied duty of confidentiality with respect to client’s information. That is why they do not need to sign NDA’s with every client they have, it’s already required.
Apart from that, it is always astonishing how different the USA and Europe are, as many answers show. As I am in Europe nothing I could say is any good for solving the OP’s problem (I am using the word problem very loosely here), but I wish to note that where I live it would be absurd to ask for the money to be given back. A gift is a gift, not a loan.
And thinking that someone would want to screw you over with free money may show some kind of delusional thinking.
What the OP is describing would turn into a nightmare if this would occur in real life. Getting a lawyer and/or reporting the situation to law enforcement upfront would be the best course of action. The last thing you need is to be the subject of a criminal investigation, even if you’re innocent.
Maybe. I had to disclose gifts over $1000 that were not from relatives on my annual financial disclosure form - but I didn’t have to complete that form until I exceeded a certain salary grade. Before that, there were restrictions on gifts etc that I could receive- but the restrictions involves conflicts of interest which wouldn’t be an issue with anonymous gifts.
I’m not sure you can know it’s not a conflict if it is anonymous. Take the quid and the pro quo might still be in the future. Having people in positions of power who unknowingly owe them a favor seems like a classic mobster strategy.
It would also be difficult to prove that you don’t know who it’s from — that you hadn’t made an agreement with someone to accept a bribe in that fashion.
In the US 2 scenarios spring to mind. The first is mob-related: some criminal is sending you funds as a bribe. They want something in return. The second is the series The Millionaire; the premise was that a rich guy would send $1 million checks out to randos with the condition that they can’t tell anyone about it except their spouse. Ludicrous? Of course. But it ran for 5 seasons during the 1950s. The Millionaire (TV series) - Wikipedia
Sending out something like $1000/wk to a public servant would be better, because it makes it difficult to know when to call a lawyer or who exactly should be notified. Maybe increase the payments slowly after 2 months to make the situation more difficult to explain.
It depends on how you treat it. If you treat it as income and declare it on your tax return, you will have no income tax issues. If you deposit it into the bank, over time, you will have many suspicious activity reports filed against you. Eventually, your bank will consider you too great a risk of money laundering, and they will close your account.
If you insist on treating it as a gift, you will likely need to prove that it’s a gift. The IRS will not accept the letters you have as sufficient evidence that these are gifts. If you challenge the IRS’s determination in court, you will find that you have no admissible evidence. The letters are hearsay. That is, they are out of court statements offered for the truth of the matter asserted - that the gifts enclosed with the letters were gifts. Federal Rule of Evidence 802 excludes hearsay from consideration by the court. There are exceptions to the broad prohibition on hearsay evidence. Your lawyer will argue that the exception for regularly conducted activity (i.e., the business records exception) should apply to allow the letters into evidence. The argument will fail because there is no qualified custodian of the record who can show that the record was made and kept pursuant to the requirements of the exception (that it was made by someone with knowledge of the facts, kept in the course of regularly conducted business, and that making this record was regular practice of that activity).
So you are going to have to prove that your “gifts” are gifts with absolutely no corroborating evidence. Again, treat it as income (which it most surely is) and this problem goes away.
You also don’t have to deposit it into the bank. You will have trouble spending that cash but there’s nothing stopping you. If you spend more than $10,000 at a time, you may generate currency transaction reports, and you may be investigated. But if you’ve done nothing wrong, it should result in no charges to you and nothing more than inconvenience.
It’s more than implied. It’s an express obligation of lawyers throughout the U.S. in their respective Codes of Professional conduct. Here is the American Bar Association’s model rule. That is not the rule anywhere but it is indicative of the rules pretty much everywhere.
This is quite possible. It’s amazing how little evidence courts have used to find that money is probably illegal proceeds and must be forfeited. But a $5000 weekly annuity is worth fighting for.
It’s not up to him to prove that he doesn’t know where it came from. It’s up to criminal prosecutors to prove that he did know and the the receipt of the money violated the law. If we take the facts at face value, they won’t be able to. Mind you, if authorities suspect he’s laundering money, they will do a far deeper investigation than the OP is capable of doing on his own, and they might be able to establish where the money is coming from, but that would only prove his innocence.
There is no scenario where the OP’s situation makes sense. It’s a fantasy. The mob wouldn’t send the money unless it had an agreement with the recipient already. The Milliionaire TV show didn’t keep their identity secret from the recipient; they merely made the recipient keep it a secret from others.
I don’t think this carries any weight. I can’t just call the IRS and claim to have sent $5000 in cash to Czarcasm and they did not claim it. People would be doing this to screw people all the time.
I’m reasonably certain I can find a way to stay under the radar. If worse comes to worst, I can always dispose of it. Besides a million dollars doesn’t take up that much space unless it’s being sent to me as ones or something, and even that’s not that bad (like a waist high pallet of singles.) So someone’s gonna have to be sending some huge amounts of money daily before that’s a problem. I suppose at that point maybe the post office will notice. Hmm. Maybe have to think about my plan.