Re:Overhyped? (Score 5, Informative)

Just find out where the checks are going and arrest him!

I'm afraid it's not that easy, CmdrTaco. Firstly, you are assuming that the money is going to someone associated with the virus writer. However, from what I understand, there are three types of people who write viruses:

1. The Attention Getter: This person wants the hype, the name, and the infamy to achieve some sort of status in the cracker or skr1pt k1dd13 community. They don't do it for the money, they just want to be 1337.
2. The Student: They do it for the study of viruses. They do it to learn. Sometimes it is legit, such as the programmers of anti-virus software, and sometimes it is a hacker (note the distinction I use here) who wishes to understand the why and how of a particular exploit. But we can rule out this type of writer because while they are sometimes in it for the money, they never want to actually cause harm, they want to learn, and their creations are rarely unleashed.
3. The Causehead: These people write the virus because they feel it will advance their cause. Be it governmental, corporate, or Greenpeace, they have their reasons. They also do not do it for the money.
4. But take a virus that makes money, such as Benjamin. Well, who says it has to go to the virus-writer. It could very well be a script that sets up the funds to go to any account, anywhere. If the writer was a cause-head, the money could very well be going to Save The Wales or some such to benefit that cause. Or even to a totally unsuspecting list of random accounts, to take away money from the corporations that have to pay for the advertising.
5. 
   
   But let us assume that the money is going to the author of Benjamin for a moment. There is also unfortunately the issue of money laundering, offshore accounts, vapor operations, and rerouting of transfers that can make finding out where the money goes all but impossible if someone is clever enough to do it.
   
   Assuming that someone is keeping the money for themselves, there are a variety of ways that it could be done. As referenced by Carl Sifakis...
   

   Method 1 Typical Drug Dealer Method

   • 1) Get a million dollars ( how you do this is you own business.)
   • 2) Fly to the Grand Cayman Islands and take your million with you.
   • 3) Some banks in that area sell legitimate off-the-shelf corporations. (These are shell corporations or holding companies. Some even come complete with a board of directors. Buy one of these corporations from the bank.
   • 4) Open an account in one of those banks under the corporation's name and deposit the remainder of your money.
   • 5) Enjoy the islands, get some sun and then go home.
   • 6) When you arrive at home, "borrow" $100,000 from the corporation in the islands by wire transfer. (As sneaky as this sounds, it is totally legal.)
   • 7) Open a restaurant with a bar.
   • 8) At the end of each month, take proceeds from whatever criminal thing you've got going on the side and deposit it in the bank as the take from the bar. It is a good idea to to over report how well you restaurant/bar is doing but not to get to greedy. The Internal Revenue Service takes a dim view of a pizza parlor that purports to do several hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue. If you don't get greedy you won't get investigated. They just don't have the manpower. It is also a good idea to plow some of the proceeds into the legitimate corporation too. If the company does well on its own it can expand and offer more laundering potential.
   • 9) Your criminal money is now clean as a whistle. Pay taxes on it.

   Method 2 The Loanback Method

   • 1) A New Jersey gambler has half a million dollars in profits salted away in a numbered Swiss bank account. He buys a string of car washes( another great way to over report potential sales) for $1 million financing it with 50,000 grand down and $450,000 with a legitimate first mortgage.
   • 2) He "borrows" the other half million from his Swiss bank.
   • 3) Since he is borrowing his own money and repaying it as if it too is a legitimate loan that means he has interest charges. This charade allows him to pay himself the interest and deduct that same interest from his taxes, thus bringing the money back into the country.
   • 4) Once he has paid of his loan to himself he may relend it to himself.

   Method 3 The Money Broker Shuffle Problem

   Mr A is Columbian drug lord. He has a million dollars sitting in New York badly in need of deodorization. Mr B is a legitimate Columbian businessman who wants to buy a million dollars worth of U.S. computers but his government wants 21 cents for every dollar he buys with his pesos.

   Solution: They hire a money broker who for a nominal fee will solve the problem.

   • 1) The million dollars is smurfed or smuggled overland to an account in a Mexican bank. ("smurfing" is process of wire transfer of money in tiny chunks less than 10,000 dollars. This is effort intensive but necessary. Billions of dollars are wire tranfered everyday but only transactions larger than 10 grand are documented by banking institutions. Transactions smaller than this are fully covered under banking insurance. Thus larger transactions are carefully tracked in case something goes wrong. Law enforment also does not possess the manpower to check all these transactions and never will. This is an every damn minute,24 hour a day phenomenon.)
   • 2) The broker writes a check for U.S. 1 million at a correspondent bank in New York City and gives it to XYZ computers.
   • 3) XYZ computers ships Mr B. his machines from its Panamanian free zone warehouse
   • 4) Mr B gives the money broker a million dollars worth of pesos.
   • 5) Pesos become sqeaky clean pocket change of Mr A. Annual loss of revenue to Columbian government: 6-8 billion dollars.

   Method 4 The Omnibus Account Method

   Swiss banks (and others I'm sure) maintain what is known as "omnibus accounts" at American brokerage houses. This make it easy for mafiosi to purchase American blue chip stock anonymously. Naturally, if they make a profit they pay no capital gains taxes on it because there are no records in the U.S. tying them to the stock purchases and the Swiss banks are bound by their laws not to reveal the names of their investors. This enables them not only to make money but to manipulate the market by buying large blocks of stock through the banks and then exercising their proxies, enabling them to determine who will be on the board of directors and who will be C.E.O.

   
   In Short, if this person has half a brain, then just "seeing where the checks are going" will not reveal the culprit.
   
   The Libra Eagles may soar, but a weasel never gets sucked into a jet engine.