The thing I never understood about it was how he planned to cash out his Bitcoin. Isn't it a public ledger where anyone can see where the money is moving?
Paul LeRoux seems to have also been a bit like that, albeit more successful at the laundering part. Nonetheless, when he was finally caught it turned out most of his wealth was in the form of precious metals under physical guard, and IIRC there was some sort of dispute over theft.
The anti-money laundering system has some questionable tactics in it: it grants virtually unchecked power to regulators and the US Treasury to squash whoever they like for whatever reason they like, and those powers were badly abused under the Bush administration. Think punishment without trial for people who criticised Israel, stuff like that. However it's an evolved system that does appear to raise the bar to serious organised crime.
Ross probably could’ve even made his own tumbler. Giving out his money to anyone that sends him some would be a naive way to think about it.
In terms of amount, I don’t think it would be hard with all the illicit activity on bitcoin to launder even this amount of money, but it’s not like he would need all of it right away.
Anyways, this is in response to “isn’t this a public ledger?” To which the answer is, “not if you make part of the ledger private—outside the blockchain—it isn’t.”
Imagine this scenario: You have 10 BTC of illegal funds you'd like to launder. I, and 3 of my friends each have 5 BTC and they're all wanting to do the same.
I transfer some money into a new wallet from 2 of my friends and give it to you. Your money goes to me and 1 of my other friends.
This way the blockchain has no link between your source funds and the money that you received.
This is a simple example. If you split the money into random amounts and do this a few times with new wallets each time it can easily become untraceable.