Is This Money Laundering?
This is price-setting algorithms running amok. From the page you link, follow the '2 new from $49,991.11' link and you will see that (at the time of writing), there are two vendors offering this item for $49991.11 (plus $16.37 shipping) and $49999.99. These are clearly not 'real' prices and yet they are suspiciously close to each other. This blog post examines this phenomenon in some detail. Basically, at most one of these vendors actually has this item in stock, but to drive traffic and sales they both offer it for sale anyway. If someone actually ordered it from the one who doesn't have it, they would have to buy it first - from someone else offering it for sale... who is setting their prices based on wider market pricing. You can say how a crazy price spiral might develop. No, this is misbehavior of sales software that tries to automatically find the price point which maximizes profit. There have been much worse examples. Ignore it. The robot will eventually see that no sales occurred and try a more reasonable price. or is this a form of money laundering? May not be, generally the amounts involved in money laundering are much higher. So if there are quite a few such transactions then yes it could be money laundering. It could also be for circumventing taxes, depending on country regulations one may try to do this to get around gift taxes etc. In this specific case it looks more of link harvesting / SEO optimization. Take a low cost item that is often searched and link to other product. if you see the company link on Amazon; Cougar takes you to shoes. So maybe on its own Cougar shoes does not rank high, so link it with similar name brand in different segment and try to boost the link.
As per OP's request Slush fund, maybe? You can receive all the Money in your Bank. By Problem if you mean whether it will raise any alarms at the Bank. Most likely yes, such kind of activity would trigger AML. Bank would flag this off to regulators and questions would be asked. If you are doing a Legitimate business, its not an issue. Maintain a proper record of the transaction and pay your taxes. As funds are large 80 K a month, it makes sense to seek to advice of a Laywer and CA to help you keep thing in order. "What can I do to help him out, but at the same time protect myself from any potential scams? Find out why he can't do this himself.  Whether your relative is being sincere or not, if he owns both accounts then he should be able to transfer money between them by himself.  If you can find a way to solve that issue without involving your bank account, so much the better. Don't settle for ""something about authorized payees and expired cards.""  Get details, write them down.  If possible, get documents.  Then go to a bank or financial adviser you can trust and run those details by them to see what they have to say.  Even if there's no scam, if what he's trying to do is illegal (even if he doesn't realize it himself) then you want to know before you get involved.  You say you're willing to deal with ""other issues"" separately, but keep in mind that, even if there's no external scam here, those ""other issues"" could include hefty fees, censures on your own account, or jail time. Ask yourself: Does it make sense that this relative has an account overseas?  I don't have any overseas accounts, because I don't do business in other countries.  Is your relative a dual-citizen?  Does he travel a lot?  What country is the overseas account in?  How long has he had this account?  What bank is it with?  Where the money is going is just as important as how it gets there (ie: through your account.)  Arguably more so. Keep in mind that many scammers tell their marks not to share what's going on with anyone else.  (Because doing so increases the odds of someone telling them to snap out of it.)  It's entirely possible he's being scammed himself and just not telling you the whole story because the 419er is telling him to keep it quiet.  (Check out that link for more details on common scams that your relative may be unwittingly part of, btw.) Get as many details as possible about what he's doing and why.  If he's communicating with anyone else regarding this transfer, find out who.  If there are emails, ask his permission to read them and watch for anything suspicious (ie: people who can't spell their own name consistently, constant pressure to act quickly, etc.)" "Mostly ditto to @grade'eh'bacon, but let me add a couple of comments: Before I did anything, I'd find out more about what's going on. Anytime someone tells me that there's a problem with ""security codes or something"", I get cautious. Think about what the possibilities are here. Your relative is being scammed. In that case, helping him to transfer his money to the scammer is not the kind of help you really want to give. Despite your firm belief in your relative's integrity, he may have been seduced by the dark side. If he's doing something illegal, I'd be very careful about getting involved. My friends and relatives don't ask me to commit crimes for them, especially not in a way that leaves me holding the bag if things go wrong. Assuming that what is going on here is all legal and ethical, still there is the possibility that you could be making yourself liable for taxes, fees, whatever. At the very least I'd want to know what those are up front. As @Grade'eh'bacon, if he really has a problem with a lost password or expired account, by all means help him fix that problem. But become someone else's financial intermediary has many possible pitfalls." Fun Fact Followup: The war on terrorism is directly correlated to increases in measures to follow money that isn't being claimed as income (aka laundered). The acts being instituted to prevent the funding of terrorism have made cash increasingly difficult to spend and made the tracking of earnings more of a priority. Once you declare the amount, the CBP officials will ask you the source and purpose of funds. You must be able to demonstrate that the source of funds is legitimate and not the proceeds of crime and it is not for the purposes of financing terrorism. Once they have determined that the source and purpose is legitimate, they will take you to a private room where two officers will count and validate the amount (as it is a large amount); and then return the currency to you. For nominal amounts they count it at the CBP officer's inspection desk. Once they have done that, you are free to go on your way. The rule (for the US) is any currency or monetary instrument that is above the equivalent of 10,000 USD. So this will also apply if you are carrying a combination of GBP, EUR and USD that totals to more than $10,000. I won't think so. Too much trouble for the compliance and internal audit team. Unless you are moving money from Russia, Iran or those non-FATCA countries. "This is fraud, the related legal code is ""11 USC 548 - Fraudulent transfers and obligations""; also see the wiki page for Fraudulent Conveyance in the United States.  Highly suggest cutting off contact with this person, and speaking with a lawyer as soon as possible to make sure you have not already broken the law." "Yes you should worry and take care not to violate the law or provide any appearance of impropriety.   Every bank in the USA is required under the Bank Secrecy Act to report cash transactions over $10,000 the same day to the IRS -- and here's the fun secret part -- without notification to the depositor.   But splitting the deposits up into smaller amounts is also a crime, called ""structuring"".   On occasion there is a news story where a retail business that naturally must deposit cash from customers will be (falsely?) accused of structuring, e.g.:  Feds seize grocery store's entire bank account -- Institute for Justice defends grocer Under the legal doctrine of civil asset forfeiture, your money can be accused of a crime, seized, and tried separately from its owner.  The actual cases indicate the money as defendant, i.e. ""US v $124,700"" In this somewhat bizarre system of ""justice"", the owner need not be charged with a crime, and is not in immediate peril of going to prison (about the only upside in this, but might be temporary because the authorities haven't charged the owner yet).  When only the money is charged with a crime, there is no requirement for the government to supply a public defender for the owners who can not afford a lawyer.... can not afford a lawyer, because the government took all their money...." "Change the password on your bank account immediately. This is certainly a scam, and while they have your login info they can cause you even bigger problems. As soon as possible, contact your bank and let them know what happened. If you look at the links in the ""Related"" list you'll see that this is a fairly common scam. It relies on the fact that some forms of fraudulent deposit take a while for the bank to detect. Sometime in the next month, the bank is going to find out that the deposit of $2500 is bogus, say from a bad check, forged money order, or some other fraudulent source. When that happens, the bank is going to undo the deposit, and demand that you make good any of the deposit that has been spent (including the $50 that has already gone to PayPal). The bank may also suspect you of being in cahoots with the depositor, so you may find yourself talking to the local police, accused of fraud. You've put yourself in a bad spot by giving your password out. Unless your can present other evidence, the bank will have a strong assumption that any activity conducted via the login is performed by you. This is why you should get in touch with your bank right away, to build up some evidence of good will on your part. More remote possibilities are that it is part of a 'long con', where somebody is trying to find out how credulous/greedy you are. This seems unlikely. Unless you are a plum target, few con artists would want to risk as much as $2500. Theoretically it could be some sort of money laundering set up, but amounts involved seem too small for that to be likely." I am not exactly sure what the true motivation of your question is as to give you a really helpful answer. But yes, sender data (name of the sending account holder) is always provided. Everything else would open the door to money laundering. I can see three possibilities:  * The money was illegally transferred and used for operating costs when they started having trouble.  * The company was playing Enron-like accounting games, and were reporting imaginary profits and gains.  In that case, the money never really existed.  * The money was outright stolen, and is in somebody's offshore bank accounts.  Or some combination of these. "Probably she asked for some kind of registered delivery, someone asked her, ""what are the contents worth?"", in order to get a number to put into the insurance calculator, and she said ""$60000"". If that's true, meaning that if the letter goes astray, you can't get a new one issued, then yes you should insure it to the value of $60000 (or rather, since the insurance is so much, you should not post it at all. Your girlfriend could perhaps return it to her client and agree with them another way to transfer money). I'm also not sure what happens when a letter hits US customs with a declared value of $60000! However, it's probably not true. This is a check (or, if drawn on a bank here in the UK, a cheque), not a bearer bond. If it goes missing then (with some trouble and expense) she can almost certainly get another one issued. So the correct answer to ""what's this worth?"" is the cost of replacing it, not the amount of money that it instructs the bank to transfer. As for whether it'll cause a red flag for you, I'm afraid I don't know enough about US banking to say. Here in the UK there should be no problem with a cheque for that amount, unless one of the banks involved has reason to suspect money laundering or related financial crime, in which case they're required to report it. But if the cheque is from a non-US account and you're paying it into your US account, then maybe you need to make a customs declaration?" "Money has to come from somewhere.  It can't just appear.  So if there is really an aunt at an agency, and she is sending checks, then she is writing checks from that company, and stealing from that company.  If that is the case, then the person with whom you are in contact would be using you to launder money (hide its illegal origin) and when the aunt was caught, you would be also. If it is really being done between countries, then it might be more difficult for them to find you, but it is still illegal. However, it is also likely that your contact may be using a common scam, as described by another answerer, that of asking for money in return for a cashier's check.  Although cashier's checks were designed to be ""safer"" than regular checks, in that they won't bounce, if it is a fake cashier's check, it was never worth anything in the first place.  When the bank tries to claim the cash from the other bank, and finds it doesn't exist, or there is no record of that check, then the effect is similar to that of a personal check bouncing: the bank will want the money back. If you have already given a portion of that money to your contact, chances are, when your find this out, he will be long gone.  I would not have anything further to do with this person. Good luck." "Seems pretty shady. From what I could guess, your dad ""hid"" or ""lost"" the money, so as to not pay capital gains on it. Even though he'd use the money to build houses or whatever, he'd have to pay taxes on it (as income). To get out of paying said taxes, the money would essentially have to disappear. This isn't super common, but it sort of is possible to move funds to other places around the world, or to keep cash that no one knows about (watch the Swiss bank part of Wolf of Wall Street or just read up about illegal money laundering, like gangs and such do). So possibly, your dad could launder the money over the next several years. If I were you, I'd just stay quiet and mind my own business."