The old mantra that “it’s always about the money” really wasn’t true, or at least never more true, until it came upon Donald Trump’s need to feed his ego.
First of all, we need to establish one divide. Trump makes money off real estate with rich dirty people and scams off clean poor people. Apparently getting caught in a scam on poor people won’t touch his presidency. So, let’s talk about the big one — which will.
If you’re like me, when you hear “money laundering” you have a comprehensive panic attack about a $20 bill in the actual laundry. But if you look at Trump, as GQ did, it’s like picking up a “Money Laundering for Dummies” opportunity, so long as you’re just curious, not committed.
****
Just a few rules is all it takes with Trumps!
Rule Number One: Specialize in a business already flooded with money laundering, and one where the tax rules are just now catch up. Guess what’s perfect?
Yeah, it’s: REAL ESTATE!
Why?
Why not? If you have someone begging to pay more for the value of the property than it’s actually worth, you provide a service, the buyer parks his money into the property, you walk off with some cash. Except, a few “sub” rules.
Sub rule A) You need property that’s already really valuable, at least to make money enough to be worth laundering. Trump sold a Florida property for $90 Million, assessed at $45 Million.
Sub rule B) It’s critical that buyer and buyee are mobbed-up criminals with no principles to begin with. Because the buyer definitely counts $45 million of the above f$90 Million as STILL HIS MONEY even though you walked off with it. Except the buyer’s taking a risk, because he can’t go to court to get it back: “He was supposed to simply hold it as $45 million in MY money safely out of the country!” That won’t work. So, the buyer is likely the type that you do not want mad at you, I mean really not. And the buyee is the type that has big hair and big waist and big ego.
Just joshin’ — no the buyee has to have lots of property because you don’t want tax people sniffing at the one DAMN THING YOU OWN. OR BUY, In fact, you never want a tax person sniffing anything — as we know. We really know.
Sub rule C) The whole damn thing is premised upon not having large amounts of cash in the bank, b/c that’s both tacky, and taxable. That’s why property is perfect, most of the buyer’s money sits by the ocean, and that’s why Trump is perfect, he has no money in the bank and takes as he dares as a “loan” that he’ll make payments on.
Sub rule D) The buyer usually will throw the buyee a bone, let him keep maybe $5-10 million for taking the risk. Unless the buyee is in such desperate need of cash, he’ll gladly take the risk, so long as he gets his loan, even if he can’t pay it back in cash, he can pay it back by running for president and doing your bidding! Like press to lift sanctions on Russia.
Sweet! Trump’s the perfect buyee because all his properties are of the type that need serious revolving cash flow to keep the lights on, but to the extent he has money, 90% of Trump’s money is in the ground, too, and can’t be used to keep lights on.
And last, Sub rule E) It’s critical that the buyee not be able to simply go get a normal type loan thing! Otherwise, why bother? What with prison and all? Of course, massive debt will do the trick with that every time.
Rule Number 2: This one’s easy bc it’s almost exactly the same as Rule number one, just do it with something else very very malleable in terms of value, like “A brand.”
Sub Rule A) You ever wonder why whenever a Trump property goes bad he’s quick to note he owns no part in it? It’s because he just licenses a “brand” that helps the owner of the property. How does Trump’s brand help? Who the fk knows with Trump, because ideally you’ve got a good “brand” like “Gucci” or something. Gucci puts it’s brand on a shitty bag, Trump puts it on a shitty property.
Sub Rule B) Since there is even less collateral in a brand than the $45 million parked at the beach, it’s just so critical that the buyer have a way of ensuring the buyee really really really won’t skip off with the money. Being willing to kill them is one way, see Russian oligarchs. Being the lender of last resort is another. Anndd having other “Komprat” such as pictures, or just being able to tell the world you’re into money laundering can be enough, like Putin’s able to do. Would it hurt Putin’s “brand” — no, Nothing seems to hurt Putin.
Sub Rule C) This is especially effective when avoiding the tax man bc both parties can “choose” their value of the brand, and the tax assessor largely has to take their word for it. And much of the money remains really really difficult to find, being tied up in 20 LLC’s doing the transaction. (This works for condo’s, too, btw — not assessed as accurately.
Rule Number 3) It sounds like Diamonds work just as well. And this may be tripping up Ivanka and dad as we speak.
****
SEE? The basic process isn’t as hard as you might think. However, when you involve guarantees of fraudulent loans, fifty LLC’s to go through to get the money, two different country’s currency involved, two different country’s taxes involved, and things already hard to tax, it’s far more complicated which is good because…..
Rule Number 4) And, I just can’t stress this enough, DO NOT GET CAUGHT!!!! And if you do get caught, make sure it’s not IN THE UNITED STATES. Because as quaint as it sounds right now, the Feds are dead ‘f’ing serious about catching this, I mean, it probably wouldn’t matter if you’re even the president or something, you’ll go to jail. Bigly. Ha ha ha ha.
See, even me, a dummy, can understand this if you just sort of look at it for a moment. And we should’ve known all along, because apparently Trump has read “Money Laundering for Dummies” ha ha ha, just kidding, he never reads anything, he just really needed the money.
___________________________________________________________________
Ok, no need to buy novels this time — unless you need to park some money on something hard to value.. No one reads my non- “breaking” diaries anyway.