You find a million dollars in a bag.. you are keeping it. How?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have been a great fan of a show called “Breaking Bad”, which is basically about a man who is a chemist who is making millions of dollars making meth. He has all this money, but he cannot effectively spend it.

Let’s say that you found a million dollars on the side of the road in a bag. You decide to keep it. You work at a Subway sandwich shop making nothing, you hate your boss and want to be free of the bullshit.

Now, keeping it might make you a target for someone who lost the bag, but hey, if they lost it, they probably don’t know where the hell it is.

I cannot take the money to the bank because the IRS would be notified. I guess one could deposit small quantities of the money into the bank, say $500 a week. Shouldn’t arose the interest of the IRS, but it could and I have no way to show that this is my money. At 27,500 USD a year, it would take decades to put the money all in.

I would have to keep it in the home, perferrably in a safe. I would feel that safe having that much loot around me. I might get robbed. A lot of people have been killed seeking the contents of a safe.

If I spend something that is greater than $10,000, does the IRS have to be notified? Could I buy a house? If I buy a house, the proceeds from the house would have to be reported to the IRS. Since I cannot buy a house without endangering my money, I am forced to rent. Because of this, a landlord can come into your home.

One cannot take the money out of the country to another place. Getting on a plane with a million dollars in a suitcase wont work. Maybe a slow boat like a Carnival Cruise Line. But where can one go without having your bags X-rayed and searched?

I have never understood the concept of “money laundering”. To invest illicit gains in a legal venture doesn’t explain where the initial money came from if the IRS comes calling. I guess I could call Saul Goodman in ALB, New Mexico.

2

The idea behind money laundering is that you run a legitimate business and put fake transactions on the books to justify your illegal inflow of cash.

3

If I was smart I probably wouldn’t keep the money to begin with. Let’s assume that I’m not a complete idiot even if I do keep the cash.

If I’m holding down a regular job then I make sure my house and my automobile are priced within my legitimate financial means. I think this would go a long way towards deflecting any suspicion that I have buried treasure. Don’t flash cash like an idiot and be careful how you spend your money. For example, if you’re going to buy a $6,000 entertainment center then get the components from several different sources. ie. T.V. at Best Buy, stereo at Audio-World, speakers at Audio-World’s competitor, etc., etc. The folks at Best Buy might remember the guy who plunked down $2,000 in cash for a television for a week or two but I bet they’re more likely to remember the guy who came in and spent $6,000.

I’m sure there’s other things to do. Don’t travel by airline if you intend on carrying a few thousand dollars on your person.

Odesio

4

Isn’t this why casinos are stereotypically magnets for money laundering? You arrive with a dollar and walk out with a million and a story about how lucky you were. Or, you arrive with a million, and walk out with a million, and a story about how lucky you were.

5

This would be a hard living here.

I wouldn’t keep the bag of money of course. BUT what to do with it?.

I could never hand it to police here because they would steal it.:rolleyes:

I think if this happened to me and if I could not after a while identify the owner and had tried every means to, I’d probably do something like give medium sized chunks to orphanages and charities, schools, and go to loads of the poor villages and hand out chunks of it to the poor anonymously. That way they get the cash as I’ve not been able to give it back to the owner, and the authorities here won’t find out it’s me giving it away and come after me to steal it for themselves.

I can’t think of anything nicer than to have so much money and to give chunks to poor farmers and villagers here. That would be a great feeling. Can you imagine the looks on their faces:cool:

6

I think this is where I would go. Cash 5-6k into chips. Play Blackjack/Poker for a while, mixing your wagers a bit so you’re not always betting the minimum. After an hour, cash out.

That way, if they go back to review footage for Og knows what reason, they’ll actually see you playing.

7

I’d keep it in a carefully hidden location and just use it in small chunks to supplement my life style. One million dollars isn’t “live like a king for the rest of your life money” anyway. Instead, what you have is a stash of cash that you can dip into for unexpected expenses, nice dinners out, pocket money for vacation, and so forth.

8

Convert to gold coins at coin shops over time, selling back when you need cash.

9

This doesn’t work. You can not make a bet at a casino without it being recorded. There’s no way to buy in for 5 grand and cash out for a million bucks without the casino knowing exactly how every cent of that million got there. You can get away with much smaller frauds, but you can guarantee you wont get away with anything significant. Casinos have to protect themselves against fraud much more than most other businesses. For example, counterfeit casino chips would be a huge liability if the casino didn’t know exactly where every $500.00 chip came from every time someone cashed it in. Even if you owned the company that MADE the chips, and you made some extra on the side for yourself to commit fraud with, you’d have a difficult time getting away with more than a few thousand bucks. A million? No chance.

Also, casinos are under a lot of scrutiny from gaming control, and I assume also from the IRS. You can not win a significant amount of money at a casino without filing a tax form. It’s literally impossible, because the casino just wont pay you out. Gaming control is probably the single government agency in Vegas with the most power. They mercilessly enforce gaming codes and ruthlessly punish gaming violations. Casinos absolutely will make a good-faith attempt to prevent the kind of fraud you guys are talking about here, because allowing it to happen on their property would put liability for the fraud partially on them.

10

Must butt in to mention the novel, “A Simple Plan” by Scott B. Smith (also the movie version of the same). A horror story about ordinary folks finding a stash of money. (They couldn’t spend it because the serial numbers were flagged, but if they just left it alone, there wouldn’t be any story.)

11

Indeed. Assuming I decided to keep the cash, I’d get several safe-deposit boxes, visiting them to draw out petty cash as needed. I’d be making steady deposits into my various accounts and investments along the way, but I don’t think I’d ever be inclined to “bling out” with yachts and mansions and ugly-ass jewelry or other ostentation. New car every four years, maybe. A Camry hybrid or something, not a Ferrari.

12

I wasn’t talking about cashing out for a million. I was talking about cashing out whatever you brought with you, 5-6k.

The only thing that scares me about this plan is if the bills are somehow traceable. I’m sure the casino would be able to trace it back to you fairly easily.

13

This isn’t a great idea, it would likely be noticed.

I’d just use my salary to pay for mortgage, utilities and savings. That would mean your bank balance is building up legitimately.

For the cash - buy nice furniture, eat out at good restaurants, buy electronics, buy groceries, buy jewellery. Maybe give a couple of grand to a good friend and have them transfer you the money (can probably do that a couple of time a year).

And don’t forget hookers and blow.

If you’re audited someone will notice but otherwise you shouldn’t have any problems.

14

How would you be better off bringing 5-6k into a casino and then cashing out, than just skipping the whole casino and putting 5-6k in the bank?

15

Re: casinos. I don’t go a lot, but last time I did I just gave cash to the table boss (craps), he gave me chips, and when I left I cashed in my chips (+ a couple $100) at the cashier. No signatures needed at any step in the process.

What would stop me from buying $5K in chips - either at once or over time, playing low stakes for a while, then cashing in whatever I had left? Then report it to the IRS as income and pay taxes on it.

Or, as has been sggested, you can buy all manner of collectibles for cash, and then just report some fictional “capital gain” when selling.

Sorry if this slips into unpermitted territory. I’m with the “stash it and supplement my lifestyle” crowd.

16

You’re laundering the money and giving justification for it’s existence.

17

I’d keep the money, unless I knew for sure it was stolen (i.e. I had some indication a bank had been robbed or something like that), in which case I’d turn it in for the reward.

Assuming there had been no bank robbery (and thus no reward), I can think of several things you could do with it to make it ‘clean’. Make cash purchases that stay below the radar would be one thing. You can give ‘gifts’ up to (IIRC) $10k per year, so I’d find some folks willing to give me such a ‘gift’ (for a small fee), then make additional purchases/investments using cash for the same value as the gifts (thus giving me a plausible source of the funds used). Gold would also be good. Purchase gold at whatever price (not worrying about making money here, only giving me some plausible reason to have it…again, ‘gifts’ or perhaps inheritance would work). I don’t think the IRS would really look deeply into things if you dotted all your I’s and crossed all you T’s wrt paying taxes and fees on any of this stuff.

At a certain point I’d start buying real estate, investing some of the rest in stocks, bonds and mutual funds to give me ‘legitimate’ sources of income. I think that, over a 10 year period you could probably work the whole million from found cash into legitimate wealth, if you were careful and cautious. Going out and buying a brand new Ferrari would probably not work out too well.

-XT

18

This is my thought. I show up with 5K. I gamble, betting on the nearly even odds things, black or white. At the end of the day, I have 4.5 K worth of casino winnings that I cash out and pay taxes on. As long as they don’t keep track of how much I bring IN, I’m going OUT with legit money. The real question is how closely do they watch the money come in. I suspect, however, that someone may someday wonder how I, a regular shmoe, have made that much money gambling, but it may not be the IRS.

19

Put it in a Caymans island or Swiss bank account. Then go on vacation and never come back.

20

Why would you pay taxes on the money. It’s not winnings. You came in with 5K and leave with 4.5K. Granted, I doubt the casino is paying attention to who is bringing in the money or cashing out. A casino usually only collects taxes on very large winnings…and they somehow have to know that you WON the money as opposed to trading in the chips that you purchased (i.e. slot winnings).

I don’t see how the casino scenario really helps at all. The only way I can see it helping is if you are trying to swap marked bills for unmarked bills. But, if someone suspects your money is ill-gained and checks the casino tapes, it would be easy to see you buying x amount of chips and trading the same (or slightly less) number of chips back for cash.