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Comment by happyweasel | Hacker News Reader

Aren't OnlyFans (and similar companies) another way to launder money?

You can easily launder money through any two sided market. OF is no different in that regard.

In normal two-sided markets goods or services are being exchanged, making it feasible to check whether the price paid reflects reality in any way.

On the other hand, it is very difficult to prove that someone is faking being a fan, so laundering can be as easy as giving a friend N dollars of suspect cash or cryptocurrency and having them pay you N minus the hassle fee through Twitch/OnlyFans/etc. from their credit card.

You could probably use web analytics to reasonably estimate engagement and calculate engagement per spend, comparing that between users.

If you have an internet service where you pay out money to users, you are required to have a plan for how to prevent money laundering. The SEC does not fuck around when it comes to that, and if you fuck up, your payment processors will drop you immediately.

Also, only accepting credit card payments to move money into the system goes a long way to protect you from money laundering.

Dept of Treasury/FinCEN is involved in enforcing anti-money laundering. The SEC is not (rounding off only slightly).

If both the person paying for the “content” and the person posting it are the same person then it could be used to launder money.

The problem is that the amount of money you could flow through it would be very little before it starts raising red flags compared to other methods.

Would be ideal for a small time drug dealer who wants an easy way to get cash though.

Is there an efficient way to get cash into the system? Or are you saying people will donate via credit card on OnlyFans but they’re really paying for illicit things?

People have laundered money with Bing/Adsense arbitrage.

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