Money Laundering thru Roulette

As several people asked for the reference to the guy who
perfected a system for playing roulette in which one "neither wins or
loses", he was Marcel Duchamp and it happened in 1924.  This is on page 126 
 of the Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas Bass.
   Of course, as several people pointed out, there are a large number
of ways to break even in roulette.  So if you have bad money that
needs laundered, why not bet evenly on red and black each time.  Or even
easier, buy 10,000 dollars worth of chips and then cash them in immediately.
New and different money on demand.
   I get the impression though that I am missing something in the
discussion since no one has mentioned something like this and that merely
replacing the money isn't the objective here.
--Dave

Maybe I'm just mistunderstanding the point David Rees is making:

>    Of course, as several people pointed out, there are a large number
> of ways to break even in roulette.  So if you have bad money that
> needs laundered, why not bet evenly on red and black each time.  Or even
> easier, buy 10,000 dollars worth of chips and then cash them in immediately.
> New and different money on demand.
>    I get the impression though that I am missing something in the
> discussion since no one has mentioned something like this and that merely
> replacing the money isn't the objective here.

No, converting one wad of, say, $100,000 into another wad of $100,000
is not the goal.

Let us suppose "Hillary" (much more interesting than our usual
cryptographic stand-in, Alice) want to be able to spend $100,000 given
to her by a friend at Tyson Foods in exchange for regulatory favors. 

He gives her a wad of $100,000. She takes this wad to Las Vegas (or,
now, to the nearby Mississippi River gambling boats) and "exchanges"
it. What has been accomplished? Nothing, except the comparatively
trivial change in serial numbers (which _can_ be an issue if the bills
are marked, as in a sting, but this is rarely an issue).

This is a _kind_ of money laudering, as is literally running currency
through washer-dryer cycles (yes, this is done), but this is not the
common meaning of "laundering," and the one which we're focussing on here.

No, one of the main goals of money-laundering is to make the
bribe/whatever money appear to be "legitimately earned," so that taxes
may be paid on it (yes) and the money then used for other investments,
buying houses, etc. "Legitimately earned" can mean won in Las Vegas,
or in cattle futures, etc. Hence the schemes here.

(In Hillary's case, suddenly having $100K that the IRS and other
agencies can find no "paper trail" for would be evidene of bribery,
for example. I suppose Hillary could claim it came out of her
mattress, where she'd been saving money for years, but I doubt this
would fly.)

U.S. casinos are closely watched for this kind of thing, of course. I
wonder if the IRS looks suspiciously at money won at the casinos on
Paradise Island, Bahamas? Or elsewhere.

And, germane to our list, the "Internet Casino" that Nick Szabo and
others have talked about someday building.

--Tim May


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>    Of course, as several people pointed out, there are a large number
> of ways to break even in roulette.  So if you have bad money that
> needs laundered, why not bet evenly on red and black each time.

I'm afraid roulette's not a fair game.  When it comes up neither red
nor black, you're out both bets... casinos gotta live too.

   Eli   ebrandt@hmc.edu

Eli writes:
[the betting thread goes on and on and on... :)]
>
> >    Of course, as several people pointed out, there are a large number
> > of ways to break even in roulette.  So if you have bad money that
> > needs laundered, why not bet evenly on red and black each time.
> 
> I'm afraid roulette's not a fair game.  When it comes up neither red
> nor black, you're out both bets... casinos gotta live too.

It gets even trickier.  Roulette in the U.S. has even worse odds than in
Europe because of addition of 00 (another number that causes all the
even/odd, red/black, etc bets to lose)  The closest one comes to an even
money bet in a casino is betting "No Pass" in craps, and constantly betting
No Pass will make you somewhat unpopular at the table...

jim