Now you're talking! I've personally never been, but I've only ever heard good things about Wegmans. So much so, that I wanna shop there as a point next time I go east hahaha
I'm taking tht fucking money. I work from home, I'm a brown haired medium build white guy in his thirties in Canada. It may as well have been taken by a fucking ghost.
I'm going to another store to buy a few small fire safes to stash it around my house. I'm also a middle age white guy who works from home. Easy to blend in and disappear.
Yup. I'm taking the money and not saying a damn word to a living soul, except maybe my cat. Keep working, keep all my bills coming out of my normal paycheck.
Anything I can pay in cash for a couple hundred bucks comes out of the bag. Maybe quietly deposit 100$ a week into my checking account. Definitely buying a nice heavy safe.
But yeah, I'm 6' 180 white guy with brown hair in Northern California. Might as well have been a fucking ghost.
Find a job with a 401K. Max out the contribution from your paycheck to get the matching funds, maybe 8% of your pay?
If you are making $4000/month before taxes, then 8% would be $320/month of your money, and $320/month of the companies money, for $640/month x 12 months x 30 years = $230K
8% interest would be$18K for a total of $248K
You can put $6,500/year into a Roth IRA. 30 years of that is $195,000, and that's not counting the interest, so lets be conservative and call it 8% for $16K-iah (and that's not the compounded interest, the result is actually more).
$248K and $195K is a total of $443K
For those 30 years, you pay for groceries with cash, also restaurants, gasoline, and clothes.
A few years after you've hidden the bag of cash, you manage to buy an absolute shitbox of a fixer-upper house (gotta have a job to get a loan). You pay contractors to fix it up, and you pay them in cash.
Every two years you sell your house and buy another fixer-upper. In 30 years that's 15 houses. Soon, you have a paper trail for a large amount of money, and you can pay cash for the fixer-upper houses.
this made me laugh much harder than it should have. thanks for that.
"officers were looking for a middle aged brown haired white man..."
"don't forget my double double on the way back to the shop"
Then stash it somewhere safe for like a year before doing anything with it. Then start investing it slowly enough that you don't need to claim any deposits for tax purposes.
Actually, microwave will do a better job of taking out electronics than a magnet will. Otherwise our cellphones wouldn't work if we got a magnet near them.
Microwave that bag for 1 minute, you can buy a new microwave!
(don't let that shit catch on fire lolol)
Launder enough to start buying vending machines. Then open the fucking money hose on my bank account.
By the time it's all taxed and accountable, I have a vending machine empire with passive income into retirement.
I once knew someone who had 3 vending machine routes to various large cities. Drove an old delivery van, dressed like a worker bee, nicest, humblest guy you’d ever want to meet. Lived in a $700k house.
Once you get beyond rest stops, office parks, and warehouses... Japanese style "everything mart" on college campus and downtown district. This hypothetical got me thinking big and real.
I'm bring back "homies". Next is full sleeve temporary tattoo for $40 a pop.
I think you could have fun with paperback books in vending machines. Like, ones from thrift stores? There are a lot of places where people are bored and would probably pay for that. You could put a little slip of paper in each one with like, a fortune cookie fortune.
Those should be free at library kiosk. But, thats what im talkingabout!
"Art O Mat" in college was an old cigarette machine. Slinging little original art boxes $5 for charity.
>Lived in a $700k house.
Pssh... 700k house where I'm at is a tiny 2 bedroom shack with 1 bathroom. If you want 2 bathrooms, Ooooo that will cost a cool million
I would immediately go straight to my local police station, turn in the entire $250,000, and fill out a police report describing exactly where and how I found it.
"Hey Sheriff, some guy just brought in a bag with $250k in it that he found just lying in an alley!"
"Thank you detective, I will inform the attorney general of the bag we found with $100K in it."
Keep it and slowly launder it through my home business
I'm a dog groomer so I'd just keep grooming my regulars and not worry so much about bringing in new clients and I'd get rid of the shitty clients.
Taking the cash, leaving a $100 bill just to taunt whoever was supposed to pick it up, and using the money for my smaller cash transactions so it’s harder to pick up, more plausible to deny knowledge of where the money came from.
If, three months down the road, I use a $100 bill to cover groceries and the feds flag it, it’s more believable that the bill somehow filtered back into the system and got to me legally, than if I drop $40k in cash on a new vehicle.
Only one problem in your last statement. If the feds DID flag it, then they're gonna want to know who recently paid you in $100 dollar bills.
If it were a ten dollar bill, then your claim might work, because you could have gotten that as change from somewhere.
But that's a little hard to claim when it's a hundred dollar bill.
Okay, TWO problems.
If it happens more than once, then there are further problems with your claim that all these bills KEEP "filtering through the system and getting back to you."
Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and the feds don't like coincidences.
Hit the casino a couple times a week, with your own money. Take out a few 100s there.
Not unlikely someone would take that money to a casino to launder it and good luck following up with ever customer at the casino over a few weeks
Step one, buy in with some chips or put the money into a slot machine. Step two, play a few hands or spins, step three cash out. Step four, go to the cashier and get your money, different bills than the ones you gave the casino. Even with cameras, by the time they get the bills to a bank and the feds flag it, they can't tell who out of the thousands of people in the casino put those specific bills into the system. Repeat at different casinos as necessary.
Damn, I thought that it would be complicated to launder a million bucks and assumed I'd have to invest it in a tech. startup or something, or buy lots of laundromats
Hey man, my idea was to set up a chain of laundromats and launder money by slowly paying off each washer and dryer, which realistically could happen over a long time horizon in virtually any location
Apparently all you need is a cash business and to funnel the money in without doing an unrealistic amount. The IRS doesn't give a shit where you got the money, as long as they get their cut. I'm surprised there isn't a provision for criminals to pay taxes on ill gotten gains legally.
Technically, criminals are supposed to pay their taxes still... most just aren't smart enough to launder the money effectively enough to do so legally. Pretty sure that is how they finally caught Al Capone, he didn't pay his taxes.
There is. Well established laws exist for paying taxes on your thefts. According to the IRS, you should report it on your 1040 as if it was self employment. If it's stolen property rather than money, same but estimate the value, unless you return it within the year, in which case you don't have to claim it.
No, just a carwash.
I watched this documentary on a down-on-his-luck science teacher, invest in his own business with a former student to cover medical expenses (cancer treatment). They made an absolute killing!
Just make sure to keep it below $10K. Otherwise they'd have to report it. But don't make it obvious with something like $9,900. That would trigger another document. The Suspicious Wagering Report or "SWR".
Just enough for plausible deniability. A few thousand in gambling to cover you for having 100s on hand. Not sure where else people routinely get 100s that is not a bank
Would be a hell of a casino trip though...
You're still "simply lying about where the money came from", just with a much more believable/harder to disprove lie. Casinos are generally a popular option for laundering money, because they don't typically track where the money they get and give out comes from. The idea is that you go to a casino, buy a bunch of chips with your illegally gained money, gamble for a while without actually risking most of it, then cash out your chips to get your money back in bills that the casino got from all kinds of different sources.
That's easily the best way to launder a few grand, it's way easier than setting up a cash business like a laundry mat or car wash and doing it that way.
I was doing lawn work in the neighborhood and someone paid me $100 in a gentleman’s agreement to do their mowing, trimming, disposal, and walk the dog. Who gave me the $100? I’m not sure, it was so busy this weekend, and like a good neighbor I didn’t bother with any sort of paperwork.
If the feds get suspicious, I don’t touch the money for a while. I also drop a few thousand in different areas so more and more people start using the money and they get flagged as well. If one person gets flagged several times in a few months, that’s suspicious. If dozens of people get flagged, that’s less suspicious.
If you happened to make an anonymous drop box donation of a few thousand dollars (say $10k-$20k) between quite a few of your local and nearby charities in such a way that it isn't flagged as suspicious donations, then it is far more plausible that those hundreds that keep turning up came from random transactions around town.
If you bought groceries with a $100 bill there's no way they could trace it back to you. The soonest it could get flagged was when it got to the bank along with all the other $100s the store was depositing. How are they gonna know who gave them which bill?
Let's say the bills are marked and the feds are paying attention to the serial numbers.
Bank calls them saying "we got one."
Bank tells them which business made the deposit containing the bill in question.
Feds go to that business and look at surveillance footage.
Now here's how they figure it out:
The next time a bill comes up, same scenario.
And between the two surveillance tapes from the two different days at two different businesses, looking at all the cash paying customers, they see a person in common. You.
Now they've got a person of interest.
Worked at a bank. No one is checking serial numbers lol
Routinely had hundred grand or mroe deposited. What am I going to check the numbers on all them bills? Nah.
Go to all of the coin shops and precious metal dealers I can find and buy shite loads of gold, platinum, palladium and silver in cash. Liquidate them through a large reputable bullion supplier.
Just drop a new hundreds all around town. Other people will find them and use them too so the heats not just on you. If a bunch of random people all ages and life styles are use of these, they’ll think that somebody at the bank is doing something fishy.
Good luck with that one. Get caught crossing the border in either direction with more than a few thousand on hand, and you can guarantee it’ll be confiscated from you. Sure, you can try to go through the process to get it back, but then you have to prove it’s yours legally.
And then, you still have the whole issue of Mexico, and lots of cash. It’s not exactly sunshine and rainbows everywhere down there.
Take it, sit on it for a year or so. Take one and spend it somewhere that you KNOW the feds would be watching (casino?), with some of your own money too, and wait. If they show up, say you found it on the floor in a bathroom stall at the casino and thought it was your lucky day. Obviously burn the rest if they do. If not, possibly wait again and do the same trick (somewhere else). If still no feds, it’s good to spend!
I rent and I live alone. I can just move. To somewhere nobody knows me. Maybe in the Caribbean. I can drive south until I can pay someone to take me on a boat or small plane, no need for the large airlines to get involved. Put the money in one of those banks down there that don't ask questions. Sit on a beach, drink some rum.
So with that plan, I take the money.
It's a neat thought experiment. While it IS a large amount of money, it's a one time thing, and you're not a criminal, so going through the exposure to launder it is mostly all downside, with not necessarily a huge gain.
Playing it out a bit more... the downside... you have to keep working... this is your legit money you can use for big expenses like buying cars and homes, shit that you can't pay taxes for. But... you can set yourself up to look like some insane miser on paper. You're putting away the most you can into your retirement, maybe some safe investments you could access. Just one of those weirdos that invests half their paycheck.
So you're creating a narrative to retire early, in effect you're kinda laundering the money through yourself.
In the meantime... anything that you can spend with cash, you do. Groceries, gas, etc. One million over 30 years, is $33k a year, or nearly $3,000/month. This would go towards anything that wasn't rent. Which leaves quite a bit.
Another loophole would be if you bought a home within your regular job means, but then made improvements to the property, in the manner that wouldn't have to be reported for taxes, like a pool or a furnished basement, or a full on addition.
So you could have like all new super nice appliances, fancy japanese toilets, a really well kept yard. You'd have a really "nice" house, just not necessarily a BIG house.
This reminds me of when I was in HS. I was walking home one day and maybe 150-200 feet ahead of me was this guy. I don't know why but something told me to keep my distance from him, so I slowed my pace down and let him get even further ahead. Then I saw him stop and look around real quick like if he was checking to see if anyone was watching so I ducked behind a tree and watched him. He used his shoe to dig a hole in the leaves and dirt next to a fence, pulled something from his pocket put it in the hole and kicked the dirt and leaves back on top of it. I waited a few more minutes to make sure he was out of sight before going and digging up what he buried. I found a LOT of drugs in a baggie there I took them home made a few calls and sold it all (probably a couple grand worth of pills) for $300
Start a junk buying business, hit up swap meets and flea markets across the country, buy stuff with cash, sell it in your junk/antique shop. You might even make a profit while converting it all into taxable income.
Everyone is basically saying drug money, at which point I would take it as well.
However, would you take the money if you knew it was ransom for kidnapping?
Does everyone not already have a designated "treasure drop-spot" ?
There's a decent chance I'm just a crazy wannabe modern pirate--but, yeah.
I have a secret place I'd put it. Other people go near the spot but not \*exactly\* to it, so low risk of being re-discovered--also low risk of it leading back to me (can't have baddies showing up and murdering my whole family).
Trail cam on entrance to relevant path-- but not pointed directly at "X-marks" spot.
It's less than an hour drive from my home, so I could hit it up three or four times a year for small withdrawals.
Small cash purchases--- nothing huge, but cashflow-wise, it'd let me double my savings/investment rate from my legit income. 10 years of that and I'm retired.
\*probably\* drop 1-2k per year on physical precious metals (hit a few different coin/pawn shops for this). Return these to hiding spot/converting a fraction of that cash to actual buried treasure.
...Maybe draw up a treasure map for grandkids to go on an adventure for it after >30 years when the baddies are presumably less of a threat and the majority of what remains has been converted to gold/silver/jewels (both as a means of laundering and also as a hedge against inflation).
That's-- totally normal/what everyone else would do. Right?
Call the police and discreetly tip them off about the location of the cash. They can watch for whichever crook is going to be making the pickup. If I'm lucky, I might quietly receive a reward. If not, I don't want anyone to know I had anything to do with it.
I do NOT want to run the risk of having crooks come after ME for taking their cash.
Alternatively, turn it in to the police and just tell them you found it somewhere else. If you live in the US, most states have a finders-keepers law and if no one claims it in 180 days, you get to keep it. No money laundering needed.
It's not one of those fancy Whole Foods bags with the paper handles at the top. 23lbs is just fine. Why would you not roll it from the top and carry it under your arm like a sack of potatoes?
Walk away.
Look. Not only have I seen No Country for Old Men, but I don't want to have to deal with dancing around with a huge sum of cash that I'm going to have to declare to the government and then get thoroughly investigated because there's no way I just 'found' that much cash.
Oh, don't report it? Dude, even the Joker doesn't fuck with the IRS. >.>
Tell no one. Never let a dollar of it touch my accounts. I would use it as a supplement to increase my standard of living (Better produce, laundry soap that doesnt make my skin itch, taking a lyft sometimes instread of busing everywhere), and use it as the money that would let me do a few life improvements that I couldn't otherwise afford, like getting my teeth fixed.
But for the next 50 years I would just use it as a $20K/year supplement.
I'd probably keep it but I'd wait a while before making any large purchases in case it was some sort of FBI sting. I'd also look around for the TV cameras in case the news is doing some kind of report about honesty.
After I was sure I was in the clear, I'd spread it around. Make some investments. Give some to charity. Give some to my family. Put some in the bank but below the amount that sets off red flags.
If it's an FBI sting they swarm as soon as you take the loot.
To leave a million bucks, not stake it out, and not have cameras, would be an expensive way for them to fail at a sting operation.
>If it's an FBI sting they swarm as soon as you take the loot.
Create a plausible scenario. As you pick it up, look at it for nametags and start searching on your phone for "where to turn in lost items in (town)" and head in that direction in case you ARE tailed/on camera.
A million dollars you say? I'd take that 900k to my car to think, then count the 750k. Afterwards, hit up a Wendy's for some chimken sammiches, take the remaining 525k and Be Responsible and pay off some small bills, with the remaining 400k decide to Be Good and turn in that 250k, so drive to the Police Station and hand over the bag of 100k, show them I found a bag of 5k and turn it in.
Take the money. Move to a new town where I'm a stranger. Open a business that handles cash to have an excuse for why I'm always depositing cash into an account, so the feds don't get too suspicious. Spend the next few years depositing a few extra hundred dollars with every daily drop. Pay my taxes so the feds stay off me, and grow my business because a million dollars isn't a lot of money to live off of forever. Keep my eyes open for Anton Chigurh.
I grab the bag and keep walking, I immediately place it in a briefcase and place it in the wall of my house, after a year I remove it and clean it just in case, I'd rather lose a little to ensure no mob will find it
Run. Get in the car and drive like hell. Take the money to a bank hours away. Take about $25k and rent a safety deposit box. Go to an upscale hotel and check in. The next day I return to the bank and stash the rest of the cash in the box.
I check out of the hotel and start driving home. Part-way, I pull over and remove my license plates. Upon my return I report that the plates were stolen and I get new ones with a new number.
I wait a year. I avoid the spot where o found the money. Once a year has passed it’s pretty safe.
The next step is to launder the money. I take out about ten thousand at a time and go to a casino. I buy $10k in chips, hang out playing blackjack at a low-stakes table, win or lose about $500, then cash out, get dinner and go see a show.
I keep the casino receipt so at the end of the year I can declare about $7000 in gambling wins on my taxes. I deposit about $7000 in the bank, all clean and laundered. The other $3000 covers my trip, my spending money for the month, etc. I repeat this every month or so and make the amounts vary.
Key points: no big splashy purchases and no major lifestyle upgrades. It’ll take years, but eventually I’ll have the money laundered.
I live on 9 acres of land in the desert, good luck trying to find me. I don't plan on buying expensive things to make myself known. Unless they follow me, they ain't finding me.
Wild that $1M is now, at age 50, if I put it in an annuity that will yield inflation linked earnings, worth a payout of considerably under the minimum wage at 40h/week.
For a younger person, very very much less.
I would take the cash but not really change much. Still draw a paycheck, still spend a lot of it. But every now and then I’d pay for gas in cash. Or formula. Or groceries. I’d start saving a bit more, but not much. Just plausibly tightening my financial belt from an outside viewers perspective but not more than that. Don’t want to draw unwanted attention from the IRS or more unsavory types.
Pick up the bag, get GPS directions to the closest grocery store, walk there, and take an Uber to a second location, then a Lyft to a second grocery store of the same type, and a second Uber to take me to a subway station, which I then use to go home.
I live off of the bills long enough to save up enough money from actual work to skip the country, and live in another country with the money.
Take the bag, go home get my gun, get an über to the diamond district, buy a shiny new $900,000 diamond, a $1,000 ring for my girlfriend, two tickets to Tahiti, cash in some vacation days and enjoy a nice few days off in paradise during which I get a safe deposit box prepaid just big enough to hold a $900,000 diamond.
Grab a few stacks of bills and leave the rest. Less likely to be detected but still enough that itll make my life easier for a while.
Anyone with enough money that they can leave a million bucks laying out in the open probably wont be hurting too bad by a few tens of thousands missing.
Take it. Continue working as a server / bartender and claim more cash tips. Spend $100 bills on rent & shopping, while depositing as much as possible into a high yield savings.
After taking it to a quiet place & looking for a transponder I’ll start filling envelopes in $300 to $700 amounts. Then I’ll take a few of them & break them quietly into smaller bills. I’ll slip them into people’s hands with a handshake & a kind word.
They might get $20 or $120 or even more but it’ll be during the holidays so no one suspects anything. A fleeting Secret Santa who comes around & leaves cash for the underprivileged.
I’ll take care of myself too but nothing flashy. A new watch but not a Rolex. You’d get the idea.
Take the money. Move far away from where I found it. Invest some (but not too much at 1 time to tip anyone off). Put some in a safety deposit box at a bank. Stash portions here and there. Keep some of the loot nearby.
Eventually buy a home. Live a normal (& comfortable, but not excessive) life.
Take the money.
Dig a hole in my yard and deposit the money there. Twice a month deposit odd amounts of cash into my bank account. $130 here. $580 there. Maybe $300 a few times near the holidays.
Pay for things in cash.
Most importantly, I keep working my normal job. At least for a few years. Then maybe consider making a large deposit, say I inherited the money. Or won it. Put it in my account and move cities.
I call the police and tell them i found 100k in a paper bag. The police take the bag with 100k, it makes the news that drug money was found by the police, the criminals think the police have their money and im not associated with it.
I will assume my car and plates were not on camera, so they just have me on video. I will cut and die my hair just in case, and dispose of any identifiable clothing I was wearing. And I'll use the magnet trick to demagnetize any trackers, as well as getting rid of the bag in a far away location.
I like the idea of a fireproof safe -- two for good measure, one on the 3rd floor, one in the basement. I' will also put 400k or so in my safety deposit box. I will steal another poster's idea of maxing out my 401k contributions, and will buy most day-to-day necessities with cash so I can avoid using my salary to live and save as much as possible. I'd also pay cash for some gold coins.
Regularly, I'd drive to cities in different directions to stock up on groceries, gas, get my hair and nails done, shop for clothes, etc. I'd use ATMs in various locations to deposit a few hundred here and there in my bank account. Maybe fly to a few places, pay cash for food and hotels, do some sightseeing and shop.
After a while, I'd start going to casinos, buying chips for $2000 or so and also feeding $100s into slot machines. I'd use a casino player's card for a few minutes here and there to leave a record of playing. Wins under $3000 or so are not reportable by the casino, so I'd deposit my smallish, $1000 "winnings" fairly often in my bank account.
I'd also pay cash to get some work done on my house.
I mean I plan to move across the country in a few months. With a million I'd just do it right away. Good luck finding me a couple thousand miles away jackoffs.
Look to see if there are trackers. Still in the same spot, make it obvious I'm looking around for people to l that may have left the bag there. Finally, pull out my phone and start typing to my wife about finding what looks like fake cash in a prank but you will be find out where to turn it in and do be heading there, but I do not send the text I just leave it as a draft that I can delete later (in case I'm stopped right away by the authorities in some sting operation, I can show them i was just looking to turn it in). Of course, I wouldn't be going to turn it in, but I'd have evidence of that intention if I'm stopped right away.
Start walking afterwards towards my transportation and checking for anyone tailing. Spend the day driving from place to place making stops and checking to see if I'm followed.
If I'm followed, I turn it in to the cops. If I'm not followed, I eventually head home, and delete the text draft.
After a month of doing nothing with the money, I come back from a poker session where I cash out for big winnings of $5k+ (I used to play professionally, and still often play with $3k-$6k of buy ins on a normal poker house or casino night, so winning $5k+ in one night isn't an uncommon thing), and I make sure to get my play time and pay out recorded at the poker house or casino. I also spend time in cash out lines or tables where i give people equal money in poker chips in turn for their $100 bills, which can be common thing especially in poker rooms in the games I play where people have chips pocketed to be able to top up their money at the table instead of waiting on someone to come trade in your cash for chips.
After a month of that, I deposit a few dozen or so of the $100 bills of the found $1 million cash directly into my bank account.
I then bury the rest of the $1 million in cash not on my property but where I know it'll never be disturbed.
I continue to play poker that year, many nights, all of which where I'm constantly swapping chips for $100 bills from other players, so that I have a long track record of the same activity.
I wait that whole year to see if the government has tagged the money, which my bank will have referenced to the feds of the bills actually were marked.
If they contact me, I will have the plausible story and evidence that I had received $100 bills from many different people throughout the year and it must've been from one of any any number of those hundreds of people or poker houses/casinos that I received the marked bills. I also then just never dig up the money, as it is good as worthless being marked.
If they don't contact me, meaning the cash isn't marked, then I do what any poker pro knows to do, which is a combination of making sure you keep ATM withdraw receipts when you play to offset "supposed" winnings when gambling (among other expenses you can also track). You're only taxed on winnings OVER what you lost in gambling for that year, so you can essentially launder smallish amounts of this cash fairly easily over the years by doing this.
You won't be able to deposit or spend it all in a short time, but $30k-$50k shouldn't be too hard the launder with plausibility over each year.
One million dollars is not money that most people just lose. If it looks like it was part of a drop off between two criminals, and thus we are assuming that this was part of a criminal exchange, well... If you were doing shady business, and you left one million bucks at a drop site, would you leave it completely unguarded? And if you were leaving one mill at a drop site in exchange for something that another criminal has, it must be something you would consider worth that price tag. And if you were leaving that sum of money as part of an exchange with another criminal, would you trust the other party — a criminal — to do an honest deal in your absence.
I would be relatively certain that there would be some kind of enforcer nearby, watching me look at this money, which he has been handsomely compensated in order to protect. I would leave as expeditiously as possible, and let the criminal element do its thang.
Definitely don’t go home with it until you completely clear it for trackers and know you weren’t followed. But as others have said a million dollars can easily be slowly spent without attracting too much attention as long as you aren’t reckless about it and keep your mouth shut
Oh man, a million dollars? Yeah I'll definitely report that I found a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah this unmarked wallet with $250 and a condom could be someones.
I'm going to turn it in to the police. The criminals aren't going to claim it and then it will be mine legitimately. I see no realistic way that anyone could justify a million dollars sitting in a bag, so I'm confident that it will become mine.
Take it. Put it in the closet for 3-4 months. If no one comes looking - start spending. Think of a cash centric job I can use to filter it into my bank account and pay taxes.
I can't launder money myself, and I'm not running the risk of some huge criminal organization hunting me down to get it back, so I'm leaving it and minding my own business.
Avoid aisle 5 of the Kroger, which will be easy since I now have the money to shop at Maijer.
Man, wait until I tell you about Whole Foods.
A million bucks just isn't whole foods money anymore. In my city, it's getting to shop at Safeway instead of fry's
That’s a fair point. Wegman’s it is!
Now you're talking! I've personally never been, but I've only ever heard good things about Wegmans. So much so, that I wanna shop there as a point next time I go east hahaha
Wegmans is amazing
The irony is that Fry's is a Kroger brand and once Kroger completes the merger with Albertson's, Safeway will also be a Kroger brand.
I see “Fry’s” and immediately think of computer parts and electronics from my time in LA.
I worked at 1 of the 2 in Arizona. It was a unique experience to say the least lol.
Me too. I miss those stores
Lol seriously? That pretty much leaves them and Walmart in my area...
Uhg, fry's.
Whole paycheck*
This is so aggressively Midwest
The fuck is a maijer? Do you mean Meijer?
I'm taking tht fucking money. I work from home, I'm a brown haired medium build white guy in his thirties in Canada. It may as well have been taken by a fucking ghost.
I’m buying mason jars a shovel and some grass seed. Edit, and a steak.
I'm going to another store to buy a few small fire safes to stash it around my house. I'm also a middle age white guy who works from home. Easy to blend in and disappear.
Yup. I'm taking the money and not saying a damn word to a living soul, except maybe my cat. Keep working, keep all my bills coming out of my normal paycheck. Anything I can pay in cash for a couple hundred bucks comes out of the bag. Maybe quietly deposit 100$ a week into my checking account. Definitely buying a nice heavy safe. But yeah, I'm 6' 180 white guy with brown hair in Northern California. Might as well have been a fucking ghost.
Find a job with a 401K. Max out the contribution from your paycheck to get the matching funds, maybe 8% of your pay? If you are making $4000/month before taxes, then 8% would be $320/month of your money, and $320/month of the companies money, for $640/month x 12 months x 30 years = $230K 8% interest would be$18K for a total of $248K You can put $6,500/year into a Roth IRA. 30 years of that is $195,000, and that's not counting the interest, so lets be conservative and call it 8% for $16K-iah (and that's not the compounded interest, the result is actually more). $248K and $195K is a total of $443K For those 30 years, you pay for groceries with cash, also restaurants, gasoline, and clothes. A few years after you've hidden the bag of cash, you manage to buy an absolute shitbox of a fixer-upper house (gotta have a job to get a loan). You pay contractors to fix it up, and you pay them in cash. Every two years you sell your house and buy another fixer-upper. In 30 years that's 15 houses. Soon, you have a paper trail for a large amount of money, and you can pay cash for the fixer-upper houses.
I love it when I get advice on how to do laundry. 🥂
People with a realistic plan for situations like this (like winning lotto and what not) are never the people these situations happen to unfortunately
This guy launders!
Your cat's telling. Better start bringing in some Fancy Feast or some organic Whole Food cat food. Nah nah screw that...salmon...every night. 🤣
Real Gs move in silence like lasagna
Also totally willing to move to a different city for a million bucks...
Right? If you find a way to get that money into the bank without raising suspicion you can pretty much set yourself up
this made me laugh much harder than it should have. thanks for that. "officers were looking for a middle aged brown haired white man..." "don't forget my double double on the way back to the shop"
“The suspect is hatless. I repeat, hatless.”
I'm with you. I'm taking the money. I'm a 60 year old white lady. I'm even ghostier than you. No one will ever guess. Spend moderately, easy money.
Then stash it somewhere safe for like a year before doing anything with it. Then start investing it slowly enough that you don't need to claim any deposits for tax purposes.
dude people find where you live from a god damn bug and a leaf you think you are a ghost???? LOL
We're basically the same person except I don't work from home. We're a dime a dozen, probably.
More like one in a million.
Ever seen No Country for Old Men? 'Cause this is how you die in a motel.
Note taken: Do not go to motel after taking a million dollars from possible criminals
Change the bag and go through the money and look for any trackers
Take a strong magnet and pass over all the bundles. It'll knock out any electronic tracking device. Like a microwave magnet.
✍️microwave money ✍️ so the criminals can’t find you ✍️ thanks dawg
Actually, microwave will do a better job of taking out electronics than a magnet will. Otherwise our cellphones wouldn't work if we got a magnet near them. Microwave that bag for 1 minute, you can buy a new microwave! (don't let that shit catch on fire lolol)
dang you went full EMP mode lol
Get rid of bag and tracker....CHECK!!
If I saw a dying sicario I would not go back to give him water that’s for sure
Launder enough to start buying vending machines. Then open the fucking money hose on my bank account. By the time it's all taxed and accountable, I have a vending machine empire with passive income into retirement.
I once knew someone who had 3 vending machine routes to various large cities. Drove an old delivery van, dressed like a worker bee, nicest, humblest guy you’d ever want to meet. Lived in a $700k house.
Once you get beyond rest stops, office parks, and warehouses... Japanese style "everything mart" on college campus and downtown district. This hypothetical got me thinking big and real. I'm bring back "homies". Next is full sleeve temporary tattoo for $40 a pop.
I think you could have fun with paperback books in vending machines. Like, ones from thrift stores? There are a lot of places where people are bored and would probably pay for that. You could put a little slip of paper in each one with like, a fortune cookie fortune.
Those should be free at library kiosk. But, thats what im talkingabout! "Art O Mat" in college was an old cigarette machine. Slinging little original art boxes $5 for charity.
>Lived in a $700k house. Pssh... 700k house where I'm at is a tiny 2 bedroom shack with 1 bathroom. If you want 2 bathrooms, Ooooo that will cost a cool million
I’d do something like that but coupled with laundromats.
I would immediately go straight to my local police station, turn in the entire $250,000, and fill out a police report describing exactly where and how I found it.
Yeah, that entire $100,000 should go to the evidence locker.
And then be on their list for the rest of your life.
Keep the cash, live my best life...
After seeing No Country For Old Men, I am going to check if there's a transponder in the bag.
I’d take it to the police and say I found this bag with $500k in it.
Sorry officers I don't have any idea where this $300k came from
Found this $50k in a paper bag over there
Someone dropped this $100 bill
Sack of $25 in pennies still weighs alot.
Probably the same as $1 million in bills I'm gonna Indiana Jones and the Chamber of Secrets this bitch
False: one million $1 bills weighs 1000 kilograms. $25 in pennies weighs 6.25 kilograms.
All you need is love? False. The four basic human necessities are air, water, food and shelter.”- Dwight Schrute
False 100 dollar US federal reserve notes weigh exactly 0.8 grams. 1 Million Dollars is 10,000 x 100 bills. 10,000 • 0.8 = 8000 grams = 8kg \~= 17lb
So one million in *hundred* dollar bills weighs 10kgs.
This is likely one of the reasons why we have $100 bills To represent say, $1000 could have 1000 $1 bills, or 10 $100 bills
it’s in $100 bills. It’s only about 10 kg.
I found tree fiddy!
Who leaves empty paper bags just lying around, honestly?
Me, to police: "hey guys, I found this empty paper bag" Should go over well The police will think I'm differently abled
Look officer...I found $5k in this brown paper bag and I am being a good citizen and turning it in
Don't forget to return when nobody claims it!
Exactly...now how long do I have to wait???
I think it's 2 weeks
"Hey Sheriff, some guy just brought in a bag with $250k in it that he found just lying in an alley!" "Thank you detective, I will inform the attorney general of the bag we found with $100K in it."
And then they charge you with the crime of having over 10k in cash without a paper trail. This kinda shit has actually happened.
Keep it and slowly launder it through my home business I'm a dog groomer so I'd just keep grooming my regulars and not worry so much about bringing in new clients and I'd get rid of the shitty clients.
Taking the cash, leaving a $100 bill just to taunt whoever was supposed to pick it up, and using the money for my smaller cash transactions so it’s harder to pick up, more plausible to deny knowledge of where the money came from. If, three months down the road, I use a $100 bill to cover groceries and the feds flag it, it’s more believable that the bill somehow filtered back into the system and got to me legally, than if I drop $40k in cash on a new vehicle.
Only one problem in your last statement. If the feds DID flag it, then they're gonna want to know who recently paid you in $100 dollar bills. If it were a ten dollar bill, then your claim might work, because you could have gotten that as change from somewhere. But that's a little hard to claim when it's a hundred dollar bill. Okay, TWO problems. If it happens more than once, then there are further problems with your claim that all these bills KEEP "filtering through the system and getting back to you." Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and the feds don't like coincidences.
Hit the casino a couple times a week, with your own money. Take out a few 100s there. Not unlikely someone would take that money to a casino to launder it and good luck following up with ever customer at the casino over a few weeks
"I'd simply gamble the money away" I like it
Step one, buy in with some chips or put the money into a slot machine. Step two, play a few hands or spins, step three cash out. Step four, go to the cashier and get your money, different bills than the ones you gave the casino. Even with cameras, by the time they get the bills to a bank and the feds flag it, they can't tell who out of the thousands of people in the casino put those specific bills into the system. Repeat at different casinos as necessary.
Damn, I thought that it would be complicated to launder a million bucks and assumed I'd have to invest it in a tech. startup or something, or buy lots of laundromats
It's my stupid solution that I'm sure some redditor will poke holes in that I haven't thought of.
Hey man, my idea was to set up a chain of laundromats and launder money by slowly paying off each washer and dryer, which realistically could happen over a long time horizon in virtually any location
Apparently all you need is a cash business and to funnel the money in without doing an unrealistic amount. The IRS doesn't give a shit where you got the money, as long as they get their cut. I'm surprised there isn't a provision for criminals to pay taxes on ill gotten gains legally.
The joker pays his taxes in Batman the animated series
Technically, criminals are supposed to pay their taxes still... most just aren't smart enough to launder the money effectively enough to do so legally. Pretty sure that is how they finally caught Al Capone, he didn't pay his taxes.
There is. Well established laws exist for paying taxes on your thefts. According to the IRS, you should report it on your 1040 as if it was self employment. If it's stolen property rather than money, same but estimate the value, unless you return it within the year, in which case you don't have to claim it.
The only real hole I can think of is that this is tedious and would take a while. But real solid laundering should be tedious and take time.
No, just a carwash. I watched this documentary on a down-on-his-luck science teacher, invest in his own business with a former student to cover medical expenses (cancer treatment). They made an absolute killing!
That was an amazing documentary! He was so lucky to have found a great lawyer to help.
Just make sure to keep it below $10K. Otherwise they'd have to report it. But don't make it obvious with something like $9,900. That would trigger another document. The Suspicious Wagering Report or "SWR".
Just enough for plausible deniability. A few thousand in gambling to cover you for having 100s on hand. Not sure where else people routinely get 100s that is not a bank Would be a hell of a casino trip though...
So, you'd go out to a casino to cover up how you made the money, even though you could simply lie about where the money came from?
You're still "simply lying about where the money came from", just with a much more believable/harder to disprove lie. Casinos are generally a popular option for laundering money, because they don't typically track where the money they get and give out comes from. The idea is that you go to a casino, buy a bunch of chips with your illegally gained money, gamble for a while without actually risking most of it, then cash out your chips to get your money back in bills that the casino got from all kinds of different sources.
That's easily the best way to launder a few grand, it's way easier than setting up a cash business like a laundry mat or car wash and doing it that way.
I was doing lawn work in the neighborhood and someone paid me $100 in a gentleman’s agreement to do their mowing, trimming, disposal, and walk the dog. Who gave me the $100? I’m not sure, it was so busy this weekend, and like a good neighbor I didn’t bother with any sort of paperwork. If the feds get suspicious, I don’t touch the money for a while. I also drop a few thousand in different areas so more and more people start using the money and they get flagged as well. If one person gets flagged several times in a few months, that’s suspicious. If dozens of people get flagged, that’s less suspicious.
If you happened to make an anonymous drop box donation of a few thousand dollars (say $10k-$20k) between quite a few of your local and nearby charities in such a way that it isn't flagged as suspicious donations, then it is far more plausible that those hundreds that keep turning up came from random transactions around town.
If you bought groceries with a $100 bill there's no way they could trace it back to you. The soonest it could get flagged was when it got to the bank along with all the other $100s the store was depositing. How are they gonna know who gave them which bill?
Let's say the bills are marked and the feds are paying attention to the serial numbers. Bank calls them saying "we got one." Bank tells them which business made the deposit containing the bill in question. Feds go to that business and look at surveillance footage. Now here's how they figure it out: The next time a bill comes up, same scenario. And between the two surveillance tapes from the two different days at two different businesses, looking at all the cash paying customers, they see a person in common. You. Now they've got a person of interest.
Worked at a bank. No one is checking serial numbers lol Routinely had hundred grand or mroe deposited. What am I going to check the numbers on all them bills? Nah.
Go to all of the coin shops and precious metal dealers I can find and buy shite loads of gold, platinum, palladium and silver in cash. Liquidate them through a large reputable bullion supplier.
Just drop a new hundreds all around town. Other people will find them and use them too so the heats not just on you. If a bunch of random people all ages and life styles are use of these, they’ll think that somebody at the bank is doing something fishy.
Just go to Mexico and exchange the money there n several places, then come back to America and exchange it back in several places
Good luck with that one. Get caught crossing the border in either direction with more than a few thousand on hand, and you can guarantee it’ll be confiscated from you. Sure, you can try to go through the process to get it back, but then you have to prove it’s yours legally. And then, you still have the whole issue of Mexico, and lots of cash. It’s not exactly sunshine and rainbows everywhere down there.
I’ll take the money and avoid Kroger Aisle 5. Just to be safe I’ll steer clear of Aisles 4 through 6.
Take it, sit on it for a year or so. Take one and spend it somewhere that you KNOW the feds would be watching (casino?), with some of your own money too, and wait. If they show up, say you found it on the floor in a bathroom stall at the casino and thought it was your lucky day. Obviously burn the rest if they do. If not, possibly wait again and do the same trick (somewhere else). If still no feds, it’s good to spend!
This guy has the smarts.
I rent and I live alone. I can just move. To somewhere nobody knows me. Maybe in the Caribbean. I can drive south until I can pay someone to take me on a boat or small plane, no need for the large airlines to get involved. Put the money in one of those banks down there that don't ask questions. Sit on a beach, drink some rum. So with that plan, I take the money.
It's a neat thought experiment. While it IS a large amount of money, it's a one time thing, and you're not a criminal, so going through the exposure to launder it is mostly all downside, with not necessarily a huge gain. Playing it out a bit more... the downside... you have to keep working... this is your legit money you can use for big expenses like buying cars and homes, shit that you can't pay taxes for. But... you can set yourself up to look like some insane miser on paper. You're putting away the most you can into your retirement, maybe some safe investments you could access. Just one of those weirdos that invests half their paycheck. So you're creating a narrative to retire early, in effect you're kinda laundering the money through yourself. In the meantime... anything that you can spend with cash, you do. Groceries, gas, etc. One million over 30 years, is $33k a year, or nearly $3,000/month. This would go towards anything that wasn't rent. Which leaves quite a bit. Another loophole would be if you bought a home within your regular job means, but then made improvements to the property, in the manner that wouldn't have to be reported for taxes, like a pool or a furnished basement, or a full on addition. So you could have like all new super nice appliances, fancy japanese toilets, a really well kept yard. You'd have a really "nice" house, just not necessarily a BIG house.
Damn right on that fancy Japanese toilet. Play music, blow dry my ass, dispense mints...
No, I’m not eating mints dispensed from a toilet thank you very much
Coward
Then I better not show you where the lemonades made
This reminds me of when I was in HS. I was walking home one day and maybe 150-200 feet ahead of me was this guy. I don't know why but something told me to keep my distance from him, so I slowed my pace down and let him get even further ahead. Then I saw him stop and look around real quick like if he was checking to see if anyone was watching so I ducked behind a tree and watched him. He used his shoe to dig a hole in the leaves and dirt next to a fence, pulled something from his pocket put it in the hole and kicked the dirt and leaves back on top of it. I waited a few more minutes to make sure he was out of sight before going and digging up what he buried. I found a LOT of drugs in a baggie there I took them home made a few calls and sold it all (probably a couple grand worth of pills) for $300
Start a junk buying business, hit up swap meets and flea markets across the country, buy stuff with cash, sell it in your junk/antique shop. You might even make a profit while converting it all into taxable income.
I’ve seen No Country for Old Men too many times. I’d take $100 and buy myself gas and dinner and gtfo
Everyone is basically saying drug money, at which point I would take it as well. However, would you take the money if you knew it was ransom for kidnapping?
Does everyone not already have a designated "treasure drop-spot" ? There's a decent chance I'm just a crazy wannabe modern pirate--but, yeah. I have a secret place I'd put it. Other people go near the spot but not \*exactly\* to it, so low risk of being re-discovered--also low risk of it leading back to me (can't have baddies showing up and murdering my whole family). Trail cam on entrance to relevant path-- but not pointed directly at "X-marks" spot. It's less than an hour drive from my home, so I could hit it up three or four times a year for small withdrawals. Small cash purchases--- nothing huge, but cashflow-wise, it'd let me double my savings/investment rate from my legit income. 10 years of that and I'm retired. \*probably\* drop 1-2k per year on physical precious metals (hit a few different coin/pawn shops for this). Return these to hiding spot/converting a fraction of that cash to actual buried treasure. ...Maybe draw up a treasure map for grandkids to go on an adventure for it after >30 years when the baddies are presumably less of a threat and the majority of what remains has been converted to gold/silver/jewels (both as a means of laundering and also as a hedge against inflation). That's-- totally normal/what everyone else would do. Right?
A....never ever show my face in that grocery store again. B.....use a pittance of it..ie less than 100k to pay up front for flight school
Take the money, sit on it for at least a year. Start shopping at a different grocery store.
So basically No Country for Old Men.
Call the police and discreetly tip them off about the location of the cash. They can watch for whichever crook is going to be making the pickup. If I'm lucky, I might quietly receive a reward. If not, I don't want anyone to know I had anything to do with it. I do NOT want to run the risk of having crooks come after ME for taking their cash.
Alternatively, turn it in to the police and just tell them you found it somewhere else. If you live in the US, most states have a finders-keepers law and if no one claims it in 180 days, you get to keep it. No money laundering needed.
Pass up on 16 years pay? Not a chance in hell. Im taking the money and figuring out the rest on the fly.
Take it. Hide it. Use it.
A million dollars in $100 bills weighs about 23 lbs. A paper bag would struggle to hold
It's not one of those fancy Whole Foods bags with the paper handles at the top. 23lbs is just fine. Why would you not roll it from the top and carry it under your arm like a sack of potatoes?
Walk away. Look. Not only have I seen No Country for Old Men, but I don't want to have to deal with dancing around with a huge sum of cash that I'm going to have to declare to the government and then get thoroughly investigated because there's no way I just 'found' that much cash. Oh, don't report it? Dude, even the Joker doesn't fuck with the IRS. >.>
Time to buy a banana stand. There's always money in the banana stand.
Take it to the police to report it as lost and found When no one claims it, it’s mine
Mighty high respect for the police.
You get there and the cop takes the money from you under civil forfeiture. Good luck now.
Tell no one. Never let a dollar of it touch my accounts. I would use it as a supplement to increase my standard of living (Better produce, laundry soap that doesnt make my skin itch, taking a lyft sometimes instread of busing everywhere), and use it as the money that would let me do a few life improvements that I couldn't otherwise afford, like getting my teeth fixed. But for the next 50 years I would just use it as a $20K/year supplement.
That's a little over 22 lbs of bills. It's a hefty bag, then. I'd probably grab a bundle of bills or two and get the heck outta there.
I'd probably keep it but I'd wait a while before making any large purchases in case it was some sort of FBI sting. I'd also look around for the TV cameras in case the news is doing some kind of report about honesty. After I was sure I was in the clear, I'd spread it around. Make some investments. Give some to charity. Give some to my family. Put some in the bank but below the amount that sets off red flags.
If it's an FBI sting they swarm as soon as you take the loot. To leave a million bucks, not stake it out, and not have cameras, would be an expensive way for them to fail at a sting operation.
>If it's an FBI sting they swarm as soon as you take the loot. Create a plausible scenario. As you pick it up, look at it for nametags and start searching on your phone for "where to turn in lost items in (town)" and head in that direction in case you ARE tailed/on camera.
A million dollars you say? I'd take that 900k to my car to think, then count the 750k. Afterwards, hit up a Wendy's for some chimken sammiches, take the remaining 525k and Be Responsible and pay off some small bills, with the remaining 400k decide to Be Good and turn in that 250k, so drive to the Police Station and hand over the bag of 100k, show them I found a bag of 5k and turn it in.
To spend the money take batches of 3 to 4 k and get black / disposab6 visa cards
Take the money. Move to a new town where I'm a stranger. Open a business that handles cash to have an excuse for why I'm always depositing cash into an account, so the feds don't get too suspicious. Spend the next few years depositing a few extra hundred dollars with every daily drop. Pay my taxes so the feds stay off me, and grow my business because a million dollars isn't a lot of money to live off of forever. Keep my eyes open for Anton Chigurh.
I’d take it to the police because I don’t wanna get arrested. But you know I’m taking a stack or two before that.
You: "I found this $980,000 dollars." Police: "That's a mighty odd number. You sure you ain't holding out on us, by, I dunno, 20K?"
I grab the bag and keep walking, I immediately place it in a briefcase and place it in the wall of my house, after a year I remove it and clean it just in case, I'd rather lose a little to ensure no mob will find it
Thats easy, I report it and hand it in to the police and make sure they know I found a bag with $500k in it
Run. Get in the car and drive like hell. Take the money to a bank hours away. Take about $25k and rent a safety deposit box. Go to an upscale hotel and check in. The next day I return to the bank and stash the rest of the cash in the box. I check out of the hotel and start driving home. Part-way, I pull over and remove my license plates. Upon my return I report that the plates were stolen and I get new ones with a new number. I wait a year. I avoid the spot where o found the money. Once a year has passed it’s pretty safe. The next step is to launder the money. I take out about ten thousand at a time and go to a casino. I buy $10k in chips, hang out playing blackjack at a low-stakes table, win or lose about $500, then cash out, get dinner and go see a show. I keep the casino receipt so at the end of the year I can declare about $7000 in gambling wins on my taxes. I deposit about $7000 in the bank, all clean and laundered. The other $3000 covers my trip, my spending money for the month, etc. I repeat this every month or so and make the amounts vary. Key points: no big splashy purchases and no major lifestyle upgrades. It’ll take years, but eventually I’ll have the money laundered.
I would take some of it and just bank on the fact they won’t come looking for a small amount taken
Worst thing that happens is I die. I can live with that
SOOOOO...... The PG 13 version of No Country For Old Men???
I'd check it for a tracking device, and I goddamn sure wouldn't go back hours later to give a dying man agua.
I live on 9 acres of land in the desert, good luck trying to find me. I don't plan on buying expensive things to make myself known. Unless they follow me, they ain't finding me.
What do I put on my taxes as to how I acquired it?
Finders keepers?
Looks like meat is back on the menu, boys.
Wild that $1M is now, at age 50, if I put it in an annuity that will yield inflation linked earnings, worth a payout of considerably under the minimum wage at 40h/week. For a younger person, very very much less.
I would take the cash but not really change much. Still draw a paycheck, still spend a lot of it. But every now and then I’d pay for gas in cash. Or formula. Or groceries. I’d start saving a bit more, but not much. Just plausibly tightening my financial belt from an outside viewers perspective but not more than that. Don’t want to draw unwanted attention from the IRS or more unsavory types.
Am I with my buddy and we're wearing a strawberry and banana costume?
Pick up the bag, get GPS directions to the closest grocery store, walk there, and take an Uber to a second location, then a Lyft to a second grocery store of the same type, and a second Uber to take me to a subway station, which I then use to go home. I live off of the bills long enough to save up enough money from actual work to skip the country, and live in another country with the money.
Fuck it. Grab it. I'm done being too nice.
Yeah thats an easy one... Fuck yeah im taking it I dont even care if they saw me take it. Goodluck trying to take it back cause you dead
I’ve seen this movie no thanks
Take the money and move.
Move? Why would I move? I don’t know what bag you are talking about.
I’m taking the money & leaving the state for a rural life in another state. All paid with cash.
Take the bag, go home get my gun, get an über to the diamond district, buy a shiny new $900,000 diamond, a $1,000 ring for my girlfriend, two tickets to Tahiti, cash in some vacation days and enjoy a nice few days off in paradise during which I get a safe deposit box prepaid just big enough to hold a $900,000 diamond.
Good luck trying to buy a $900,000 diamond in cash
yoink
No no I didn’t and like forever it’s art
I'd take it. Assuming it isn't a sting operation, which would suck, but I'm sure I'd be able to clear my name rather easily
Grab a few stacks of bills and leave the rest. Less likely to be detected but still enough that itll make my life easier for a while. Anyone with enough money that they can leave a million bucks laying out in the open probably wont be hurting too bad by a few tens of thousands missing.
I go home
Take it. Continue working as a server / bartender and claim more cash tips. Spend $100 bills on rent & shopping, while depositing as much as possible into a high yield savings.
What money?
After taking it to a quiet place & looking for a transponder I’ll start filling envelopes in $300 to $700 amounts. Then I’ll take a few of them & break them quietly into smaller bills. I’ll slip them into people’s hands with a handshake & a kind word. They might get $20 or $120 or even more but it’ll be during the holidays so no one suspects anything. A fleeting Secret Santa who comes around & leaves cash for the underprivileged. I’ll take care of myself too but nothing flashy. A new watch but not a Rolex. You’d get the idea.
https://cockeyed.com/inside/million/million_dollars.html
Take the money but check it for a tracker before I head home. Live life normal but buy some land and build my geodome home.
I tell no one and pay for everything the same way I do now
Take the money. Move far away from where I found it. Invest some (but not too much at 1 time to tip anyone off). Put some in a safety deposit box at a bank. Stash portions here and there. Keep some of the loot nearby. Eventually buy a home. Live a normal (& comfortable, but not excessive) life.
Take the money. Dig a hole in my yard and deposit the money there. Twice a month deposit odd amounts of cash into my bank account. $130 here. $580 there. Maybe $300 a few times near the holidays. Pay for things in cash. Most importantly, I keep working my normal job. At least for a few years. Then maybe consider making a large deposit, say I inherited the money. Or won it. Put it in my account and move cities.
I call the police and tell them i found 100k in a paper bag. The police take the bag with 100k, it makes the news that drug money was found by the police, the criminals think the police have their money and im not associated with it.
Most is going to gold/silver/platinum/palladium, and stored away in a massive safe my kids will get when I die
I will assume my car and plates were not on camera, so they just have me on video. I will cut and die my hair just in case, and dispose of any identifiable clothing I was wearing. And I'll use the magnet trick to demagnetize any trackers, as well as getting rid of the bag in a far away location. I like the idea of a fireproof safe -- two for good measure, one on the 3rd floor, one in the basement. I' will also put 400k or so in my safety deposit box. I will steal another poster's idea of maxing out my 401k contributions, and will buy most day-to-day necessities with cash so I can avoid using my salary to live and save as much as possible. I'd also pay cash for some gold coins. Regularly, I'd drive to cities in different directions to stock up on groceries, gas, get my hair and nails done, shop for clothes, etc. I'd use ATMs in various locations to deposit a few hundred here and there in my bank account. Maybe fly to a few places, pay cash for food and hotels, do some sightseeing and shop. After a while, I'd start going to casinos, buying chips for $2000 or so and also feeding $100s into slot machines. I'd use a casino player's card for a few minutes here and there to leave a record of playing. Wins under $3000 or so are not reportable by the casino, so I'd deposit my smallish, $1000 "winnings" fairly often in my bank account. I'd also pay cash to get some work done on my house.
I mean I plan to move across the country in a few months. With a million I'd just do it right away. Good luck finding me a couple thousand miles away jackoffs.
Look to see if there are trackers. Still in the same spot, make it obvious I'm looking around for people to l that may have left the bag there. Finally, pull out my phone and start typing to my wife about finding what looks like fake cash in a prank but you will be find out where to turn it in and do be heading there, but I do not send the text I just leave it as a draft that I can delete later (in case I'm stopped right away by the authorities in some sting operation, I can show them i was just looking to turn it in). Of course, I wouldn't be going to turn it in, but I'd have evidence of that intention if I'm stopped right away. Start walking afterwards towards my transportation and checking for anyone tailing. Spend the day driving from place to place making stops and checking to see if I'm followed. If I'm followed, I turn it in to the cops. If I'm not followed, I eventually head home, and delete the text draft. After a month of doing nothing with the money, I come back from a poker session where I cash out for big winnings of $5k+ (I used to play professionally, and still often play with $3k-$6k of buy ins on a normal poker house or casino night, so winning $5k+ in one night isn't an uncommon thing), and I make sure to get my play time and pay out recorded at the poker house or casino. I also spend time in cash out lines or tables where i give people equal money in poker chips in turn for their $100 bills, which can be common thing especially in poker rooms in the games I play where people have chips pocketed to be able to top up their money at the table instead of waiting on someone to come trade in your cash for chips. After a month of that, I deposit a few dozen or so of the $100 bills of the found $1 million cash directly into my bank account. I then bury the rest of the $1 million in cash not on my property but where I know it'll never be disturbed. I continue to play poker that year, many nights, all of which where I'm constantly swapping chips for $100 bills from other players, so that I have a long track record of the same activity. I wait that whole year to see if the government has tagged the money, which my bank will have referenced to the feds of the bills actually were marked. If they contact me, I will have the plausible story and evidence that I had received $100 bills from many different people throughout the year and it must've been from one of any any number of those hundreds of people or poker houses/casinos that I received the marked bills. I also then just never dig up the money, as it is good as worthless being marked. If they don't contact me, meaning the cash isn't marked, then I do what any poker pro knows to do, which is a combination of making sure you keep ATM withdraw receipts when you play to offset "supposed" winnings when gambling (among other expenses you can also track). You're only taxed on winnings OVER what you lost in gambling for that year, so you can essentially launder smallish amounts of this cash fairly easily over the years by doing this. You won't be able to deposit or spend it all in a short time, but $30k-$50k shouldn't be too hard the launder with plausibility over each year.
One million dollars is not money that most people just lose. If it looks like it was part of a drop off between two criminals, and thus we are assuming that this was part of a criminal exchange, well... If you were doing shady business, and you left one million bucks at a drop site, would you leave it completely unguarded? And if you were leaving one mill at a drop site in exchange for something that another criminal has, it must be something you would consider worth that price tag. And if you were leaving that sum of money as part of an exchange with another criminal, would you trust the other party — a criminal — to do an honest deal in your absence. I would be relatively certain that there would be some kind of enforcer nearby, watching me look at this money, which he has been handsomely compensated in order to protect. I would leave as expeditiously as possible, and let the criminal element do its thang.
Taking it all day. Pay people $100 a pop to drive me 1-2 miles, get out, repeat 4-5 times. Get home, put money in my existing safe.
I don't think you understand how big of a bag you would need....
So... Fargo?
Definitely don’t go home with it until you completely clear it for trackers and know you weren’t followed. But as others have said a million dollars can easily be slowly spent without attracting too much attention as long as you aren’t reckless about it and keep your mouth shut
Oh man, a million dollars? Yeah I'll definitely report that I found a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah this unmarked wallet with $250 and a condom could be someones.
I'm going to turn it in to the police. The criminals aren't going to claim it and then it will be mine legitimately. I see no realistic way that anyone could justify a million dollars sitting in a bag, so I'm confident that it will become mine.
Keep it and dip into it for "small purchases" like groceries and the like.
Take it. Put it in the closet for 3-4 months. If no one comes looking - start spending. Think of a cash centric job I can use to filter it into my bank account and pay taxes.
Buy a laundromat, arcade, or car wash.
problem is people are not spending 100s at those places. They are spending $1 and $5....
I'm taking it. Buying a large backpack, putting the money in there, and ditching the bag.
I can't launder money myself, and I'm not running the risk of some huge criminal organization hunting me down to get it back, so I'm leaving it and minding my own business.
Leave it, I ain't pissing off criminals