You're making me think of the part in Office Space where the techies want to launder money, but end up looking it up in the dictionary first.

Ha! I didn't remember that part. I would have to look it up, too.

There's a subreddit called Explain Like I'm Five (ELI5), and I too had to look up what money laundering actually is, and that subreddit had the best explanation: [link]

I'm fascinated how Reddit can be both a cesspool and a super great source of info depending on which subreddit you wander into.

Breaking Bad was probably where I really understood it best.

I almost never go to Reddit because of the cesspool aspect and I approach all links to it with caution but they are often good. It's kind of weird but definitely interesting!

Of course, if JenP's restaurant etc *is* laundering money, they should have paid their taxes faithfully! So either they are bad at it, maybe mixed up which books were for what purpose, or maybe they just got a little ambitious with using every loophole they thought they could and went too far. I can see that happening even if $20M worth is kind of astounding. My guess is they are making enough money that they thought they could get away with not paying taxes like Amazon, etc, but are in reality small potatoes enough that more actual rules apply. What's most surprising to me about that story is that the IRS has enough infrastructure in place to pursue it!