Interesting Little Tidbit Of The Day

I had no idea, until a few weeks ago, that money laundering can occur in retirement planning. This is not something that usually comes up in conversations, but when I found out about it I was shocked. The process involves turning the dirty money into clean money. "How does this happen?" you may ask yourself.

Well sneaky money launderers or those acting on behalf of them will come into the Financial Advisor's office, or just go to the company website of choice, and sign up to withdraw, transfer, or buy into an investment. Now think back to a previous posting about the 60-90 window of retraction. Well the launderers pay in the money in a lump sum, let it sit, and then make a retraction request. The mechanics behind it are so simple yet so unbelievable. Well, now the fund company or brokerage firm has to distribute the money back to the investor from their own money. This makes the money "clean money" and untraceable by the government.

That is why Financial Advisors are so picky and selective about some of their clients. Noone wants to go to jail for aiding in the money laundering process. So just be weary when someone wants to invest a very large lump sum of money all at once like that, without it being a company sponsored retirement plan.

Now that I am thinking about it, I did receive a random call once from a guy claiming to have won the lottery somewhere and wanted to put it in an investment for safe keeping. The red flag went up immediately because of the way he worded his requests. Not wanting to get into an arguement over the phone, I did what I do best and just transferred the call to another department. Yes, I really did do that and still do that with calls that I do not want to deal with at the moment. Ha ha.

Moral of the story? Crime only pays when someone pulls the wool over your eyes.