'The Wolf of Wall Street' Movie Was Financed With Stolen Money, Says DOJ (nydailynews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NY Daily News: Federal officials charged a $3.5 billion Malaysian money-laundering scheme helped finance the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "Wolf of Wall Street" -- the Hollywood tale that parallels the corruption charges. U.S. officials seek to recover $1.3 billion of the missing funds, including profits from the Martin Scorsese-directed movie that earned five Oscar nominations. The conspirators used some of their illicit cash to fund Scorsese's tale of "a corrupt stockbroker who tried to hide his own illicit profits in a perceived foreign safe haven," said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell. DiCaprio famously played the lead role of convicted fraudster Jordan Belfort, who was ordered to repay $110 million to 1,500 victims of his scam. The identified conspirators included movie producer Riza Shahriz Abdul Aziz, the prime minister's stepson, and businessman Low Taek John, a friend of Najib's family. A third scammer identified only as "Malaysian Official 1" was widely believed to be Najib. Court papers indicated that $681 million from a 2013 bond sale went directly into the official's private account. The nation's attorney-general, Mohamed Apandi, came to Najib's defense Thursday, expressing his "strong concerns at the insinuations and allegations" brought against the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Apandi's office, after investigating the $681 million bank deposit, announced in January that the funds were a donation from the Saudi royal family. The prime minister wound up returning most of the cash. Federal officials, in their California court filing, indicated they were hoping to seize proceeds from the 2013 movie, along with luxury properties in New York and California, artwork by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, and a $35 million private jet. Investigations of 1MDB are already underway in Switzerland and Singapore, with officials in the latter announcing Thursday that they had seized assets worth $176 million. This is shaping up to be the largest U.S. Justice Department asset recovery action in history.

Comments

Where is the disclaimer??

[NotInHere]

Disclaimer: Slashdot does not condone stolen money!!

Re:Where is the disclaimer??

[BeauHD]

Let me take the time out of my busy schedule to direct you to the link that reads: "IsoHunt Launches Unofficial KAT Mirror." It lies directly below the story you are commenting on. There is even an arrow to point you in the right direction.

Please, no need to thank me -- it's what I do!

Re:Where is the disclaimer??

[smallfries]

Disclaimer: Slashdot does not condone Leonardo DiCaprio.

Well, this is ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

or extremely fitting.

Re:Well, this is ironic...

[sjames]

Coming soon to a theater near you: "The Wolf of The Wolf of Wall Street".

Re:Well, this is ironic...

[fustakrakich]

This stuff just writes itself, really.

Shh! Don't tell the Screen Writers Guild.

I'm sorry

[mfh]

But this is awesome.

Re: I'm sorry

[rnmartinez]

I cannot agree more So gonna watch it again on Netflix so the DOJ can try and seize .75 from them

Re: I'm sorry

[mykepredko]

That's nothing - I'm going to watch it twice!

Re: I'm sorry

[William Robinson]

I will wait for next movie 'The Wolf Of Hollywood' :-D

Re: I'm sorry

[Joce640k]

If we all go and watch it on Netflix can the DOJ confiscate that, too?

Apple called

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple called, they what their iRONY back...

Where did the money come from?

[HBI]

Money laundering is the most opaque concept ever. I used to be an officer at a bank (they made all of the network guys exempt bank officers) and had to go through repeated briefings on this, and no one could explain money laundering to my satisfaction. It appears to be "transactions the government doesn't like" rather than anything in particular.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[elrous0]

The money comes from illegal deals, sales, and trades. And someone wants to "launder" it to make look like it came from legitimate income or investment.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[gurps_npc]

It's really really simple.

Money laundering is the crime of hiding where the money came from.

Now, all the regulations may be screwed about it are screwed up and complicated. But the crime itself is simple.

Just because regulations about a crime are poorly written does not mean the crime is poorly defined.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[PCM2]

Above and beyond that ... so you're telling me a Hollywood movie ... was financed ... using accounting tricks ... that could be defined as money laundering.

Wait a sec.

Give me a minute to process this.

Pressure ... in skull ... building .... NHGH

Re:Where did the money come from?

[HBI]

OK, but what made them illegal? I don't believe the government when they bring charges like this, because someone discovered ex post facto that something broke the law. When they say "3.5 billion money laundering scheme", I want to know what the original money came from and why the transaction was supposedly illegal. And we rarely get that information.

Inherently not trusting the government and the huge power such 'money laundering' accusations seem to have - no one ever seems to ask the question I am asking, and the article sure as hell doesn't say a damned thing about where the 3.5 billion came from - make me very suspicious.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

The money comes from illegal deals, sales, and trades. And someone wants to "launder" it to make look like it came from legitimate income or investment.

Yes and 'illegal' means "whatever the government doesn't like"

Re:Where did the money come from?

[HBI]

If it's not poorly defined then why can't people who are supposed to be professionals in preventing money laundering patently unable to explain it effectively?

Briefer: "Be on the lookout for money laundering!"
Me: "Ok, so what should we be on the lookout for?"
Briefer: "Suspicious transactions."
Me: "Suspicious how?"
Briefer: "Next slide!" ...

Re:Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

It's really really simple.

Money laundering is the crime of hiding where the money came from.

Now, all the regulations may be screwed about it are screwed up and complicated. But the crime itself is simple.

Just because regulations about a crime are poorly written does not mean the crime is poorly defined.

And its not just money laundering thats illegal!!!

If you happen to have just $9999 to deposit into your bank account THATS ILLEGAL TOO! (because its 'structuring').

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Attila Dimedici]

My understanding from other stories is that the money came from investors in the 1MDB fund...and the profits were paid out to specific people, who may or may not have also been investors.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[alexander_686]

Laws have to factor in both actions and intent. If one relied on only one or the other abuses could occur. I suspect that you are having issues with the nebulas nature of intent.

Most fraud and white collar rely more highly on this than other crimes. Partly this is because criminals are more inventive and imaginative then legislators. Partly this is because the western legal system is designed to ban actions, not proscribe actions. i.e., if a law says you can't do something than you can do it.

I share some of your unease on overreaching laws but I think intent has to a important factor.

Re: Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

Yep. When I worked in the industry ALL suspicious transactions that were over a certain amount were transmitted to FDIC / OTS. Suspicious could be whatever the compliance officer wanted to capture. Not sure how it was processed by the Feds but they had the data if they ever wanted to investigate.

HAVING money is suspicious!

Re:Where did the money come from?

[BitterOak]

OK, but what made them illegal?

The original source of the money doesn't have to be illegal to trigger money laundering laws. It's the act of hiding transactions from the government (which may be otherwise legal or illegal) which is illegal. Even making repeated deposits or withdrawals in amounts just under $10,000 to avoid reporting requirements counts as money laundering even if there was no illegal activity involved in procuring the money.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[queazocotal]

In this case, as I understand it, bribery. Large amounts of money paid to corrupt malaysian government officials.
Dealing with the proceeds of this in the USA is not legal, and it is treated as simply as if the people involved walked into a bank and stole it.
The regulations - or earlier versions of them - were in force at the time of the original deposits into US institutions.
   

Re:Where did the money come from?

[elrous0]

The details are complicated, but in this case most of the money apparently came from misappropriation of Malaysian government funds that were supposed to go towards local economic development and some big bribes from a Saudi oil company.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[cmiller173]

The link to the justice departments press release explains more than the op or the poorly edited nydailynews.com article.

It appears that officials of the Malasian govt stole the money from a Malasian government development fund that is/was intended to fund gov't projects.

click where it says " seize proceeds from the 2013 movie, " in the op, or https://www.justice.gov/opa/sp...

Re:Where did the money come from?

[AK Marc]

Usually drugs, sometimes trafficking. When you sell $1B in drugs and have $1B in cash, if you spend it, people will ask where you got it from (any transaction over $10k is reported to the feds). So you have to make it appear legal, and declare it as legal income, so you are "legal" with the IRS and FBI/DEA (separate rules, and either will send you to jail for your illegal income). So you take your $1B and declare it as gambling winnings, invest it, mix it with other money, extract it, and treat it like it was a gain from the other money, or any of the other laundering techniques. Then you have $1B (minus taxes) free and clear, and any audit that doesn't go back before the laundering will show it to be 100% legal (if your laundering is done right).

Re:Where did the money come from?

[fustakrakich]

Where does it come from? Isn't it obvious? HSBC of course!

Re:Where did the money come from?

[AK Marc]

People at the bank can't know whether it's money laundering. It's beyond their scope of business to determine whether the $1M came from a hit to execute Jonbenet Ramsey, or undelcared income from carpentry. They report the "suspicious" income to the feds, and the feds investigate. Most "investigations" are adding the transaction to a file, and a real investigation doesn't happen until the file is thick enough. Then they investigate the person, looking for actual illegal activity.

Laundering legal money is technically illegal, but almost never prosecuted (unless they "know" you are doing something illegal, but can't make it stick).

Re:Where did the money come from?

[guruevi]

Yes. If you have near 10k in transactions from/to the same places over an unspecified time period, you are guilty. You just have to make sure it doesn't look like you are structuring to a civil administrator, judge and/or jury.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[AK Marc]

Nope. That's not illegal. one deposit a day of $9999 for two weeks is illegal structuring. A single "suspicious" deposit is not illegal. And it's not structuring. Structuring requires that you have more than $10k that you deliberately split to avoid hitting the $10k limit. $5k a day for two weeks, with none before and after would also likely trigger alerts for structuring, and has nothing to do with $9999.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Aighearach]

OK, but what made them illegal?

Statutes.

You haven't identified a difficult to understand concept, you're just being willfully obtuse and intellectually dishonest and pretending you don't understand. More likely, you don't like some of the laws, and so are passive-aggressively denying that their existence is well-documented.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[PRMan]

Tell that to Kent Hovind. His ministry deposited amounts in the $9000s every week because that was the amount of money they were receiving from donations. He went to jail for over 10 years because of this (perhaps because he was a very outspoken young earth creationist).

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Ecuador]

Say you receive $1,000,000 from selling drugs. You can't just go around spending it because you can't explain where you got it. In fact, in the US the police can outright confiscate money and you have to prove they came from legal sources. So, what do you do? You open a laundermat and you start spending your $1,000,000 on it in various ways that either require some "interesting" accounting, or paying undocumented salaries, buying equipment with cash etc. However, whatever income your laundermat makes is perfectly legitimate and you can spend without worrying.
Laundering money costs of course. E.g. your laundermat business will appear in the books for example as having a $20k/week revenue, $10k/week expenses for $10k/week earnings, when in fact you are pumping in another $20k/week in undocumented "dirty money", effectively making 1 clean dollar for every 2 dirty ones and before the year is over you will have converted your "hot" million to a "clean" half a mil.
You can also find someone who does this for you through their business, so you give them undocumented dirty money and they "pay" you for "services" with less, but "clean", money.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[mspohr]

I get rent checks totaling over $10K each month. However, since some people pay on time and others are chronically late, I typically have two (or more) deposits each month each less than $10K.
Is this illegal money laundering?

Re:Where did the money come from?

[JoeMerchant]

If the government didn't mind the transactions, then it wouldn't be laundering, it would just be obscure. When you've got "bad" transactions that are made obscure, that becomes laundering.

Think of it like resisting arrest - if nobody's trying to arrest you, then it's O.K. to run from the cops - as long as you don't look too guilty while you're doing it, otherwise, they'll assume you've done something bad and try to stop you.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[AK Marc]

Yes. It's more like a form of civil forfeiture. 3 Felonies a Day, and all that.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[AK Marc]

Tax fraud and other charges were laid, structuring was added as one of many charges, though the anti-structuring people make it sound like it was the only thing he was investigated/charged with. Guilty of 58 charges, but you make it sound like the one structuring charge was the only thing he was investigated and charged with.

He argued that his for-profit amusement park was not taxable because it belonged to God.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[AK Marc]

It likely has already been reported as such, and you were looked at, and ignored. Someone with 10k a month in two inequal deposits of varying amounts that are substantially similar looks like someone with $10k a month in income, nothing more. Drug deals and such have sporadic income and lumps of substantially equal deposits in clusters.

You were likely investigated for structuring already, and didn't even know it. You file taxes on all the income (presumably) and the source is listed and is legal, so everything should be provably legit to anyone glancing over your finances.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you watch Breaking Bad? They spent half the season demonstrating how the big guys do it.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[jandrese]

It's not illegal to deposit a big chunk of money, you just have to fill out a form explaining how you got it. Trying to avoid the form by splitting up the deposit is what gets you in trouble, but the trouble is just "gotta fill out the form". If you can't fill it out or you lie on it then you can find yourself in real trouble.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[jandrese]

Did you fill out a form at the bank explaining that they are rent checks? Or maybe explained it to the teller when you made the deposit? Then it's not illegal. People are acting like making a big deposit (or a few smaller deposits) is going to send you right to jail, when all it does it cause a bit more hassle as the bank is forced to do due diligence.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Aighearach]

No, see, when they investigate you if they find out that you just got a payment from somebody for $9999 and deposited it, then no problem, and no charges.

The problem is that none of the popular stories on AM radio that ask people to be outraged about this are that sort of situation. None of the famous cases were people who actually just deposited the amount of money they received. They all were intentionally structuring their payments to avoid automatic human review of the transaction, and they have excuses for why they didn't mean to do anything wrong. But none of the excuses were, "I wasn't trying to avoid triggering review." Of course they were trying to avoid review. That is why we have jury trials, and these are not emotional cases where it is easy to get railroaded. These are boring trials, and if you're found guilty, it is because there was evidence of wrongdoing. Don't structure what you deposit in the bank based on the sizes of transaction that trigger review. Just deposit what makes business sense to deposit, do your accounting according to what is actually true, and none of these laws will touch you. Transactions will either be the same size on both ends, or they will be aggregated based on being from the same day/week/month/whatever.

If you're paying your taxes, you probably don't even have a reason to avoid review. If your banker warns you that a transaction will be reported to the IRS, is that OK because you pay your taxes, or do you need to cancel the transaction, and change the sizes of what you deposit so that the IRS won't be notified?

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Aighearach]

Yeah, what if you need to make a legitimate deposit in the high $9000s, and don't want to be suspected of "structuring", so you split it into two deposits in the high $4000s. Is that structuring also, since you're trying to avoid structuring?

Yes. Don't do it. If the amount is in the high $9000s, let it be. If it is $10,001, let it be. Let it be the natural, normal, correct size for whatever you were actually doing, instead of some re-sized amount that tries to react to bank reporting cutoff points.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Darinbob]

I don't think that by itself that doing the equivalent of money laundering is illegal. It's only when it's done to help mask a crime or avoid taxes that it becomes criminal. Though rules will certainly vary country to country. However almost no one goes to all the trouble of laundering money when there's not a crime involved because it's not free.

Re: Where did the money come from?

[Aighearach]

Well, having a small enough amount of money that you're worried about if it is near $10k or not is definitely suspicious. Where did this poor schmuck get this pittance, anyways? And why is he paranoid just over people knowing that he has it?

Re:Where did the money come from?

[fustakrakich]

I wonder if they'll ever look into Get Shorty.

But really, if you want to securely launder drug money, just take it to the bank. They are invincible to any prosecution.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[tsotha]

What makes it complicated for people who work at financial institutions is walking the tightrope between "know your customer" laws and privacy statutes.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[tsotha]

No, a single transaction just under ten grand isn't illegal. But five transactions over five days, or from five different banks, each just under $10k? That's going to get you into trouble. You could ask Dennis Hastert, if they'll let you visit him in jail.

The sad thing is all structuring requires is intent. If you have $15k, and you decide to split it into two transactions, you have already broken the law independent of whether or not you follow through with the transactions.

Incidentally, that $10k limit is only for certain types of transactions. Other types have lower limits, and there isn't anywhere official you can go to find out what those limits are or what kind of transactions they apply to. Even if nobody at the bank files a Suspicious Transaction Report, your transaction may still go to the government.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[tsotha]

No, the reporting requirements are all about cash. If you're getting checks the government already knows where the money is coming from. The only way this is going to get you into trouble is if you pull the money out in cash and then deposit it somewhere else in small increments.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[tsotha]

The problem is that none of the popular stories on AM radio that ask people to be outraged about this are that sort of situation.

There are a few legit outrages. There are people who have had their money seized by the government because all their cash deposits came in under $10k. In a lot of cases the reason they were making smaller deposits is because their insurance company required them to have less than $10k in cash on the premises. Small deposits aren't a crime in and of themselves - it's only a crime if the intent is to evade currency reporting requirements. In general federal agents just assume you're engaged in structuring if you make smaller deposits, but when they do that they're not following the law, and the IRS has had to return the money in hundreds of cases.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Aighearach]

"Government workers make mistakes" is not in itself a reasonable argument against a particular policy, though. I don't doubt it is inconvenient if you get caught up in it. But that doesn't mean that the policy itself is hard to understand. Cops arrest the wrong people frequently, and often when no crime was committed.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[kinko]

in this case, 1MDB transferred some money to an account owned by a company with a very similar name to another investment company, and claimed it was for investment purposes. (The 'fake' company was controlled by insiders, and was named to looked like it was a Saudi-owned investment fund.) The money from the shell account was transferred through multiple other shell accounts through multiple jurisdictions, to try to hide the paper trail.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[NotAPK]

"If you can't fill it out or you lie on it then you can find yourself in real trouble."

And everyone just accepts this as OK?

Why should the bank know any more about me or my life than they already do?

I don't buy "preventing money laundering" as some kind of justified objective. In my mind, it's not.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[NotAPK]

"If you have $15k, and you decide to split it into two transactions, you have already broken the law independent of whether or not you follow through with the transactions."

Then it's a ridiculous law. Just my opinion, but frankly downright ridiculous.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[tsotha]

"Inconvenient" is a pretty mild description when you business goes under because the government has taken all your operating capital. In any event, they should know better. This isn't a case of a life-or-death decision that has to be made in a split second.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[tsotha]

I agree. I suspect most people would agree if they knew what the law is, but you have to be a small business owner or a poker player or some such to deal with that kind of cash. Most people in the US don't even have $15k.

Re: Where did the money come from?

[mspohr]

Thanks for the clarification.

Re: Where did the money come from?

[mspohr]

Thanks.
I guess that's reassuring.
I do report the income on my taxes but I'd hate to get caught up in a witch hunt.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not preventing money laundering, its eliminating a vector that might involve the Bank in money laundering in the eye of the law. This is the one single most important risk factor in money laundering.

Seriously, you think that Banks really care about money laundering and fraud? The couldn't give a shit really - they'd rather ignore it and make a shit ton of money on it.That's why laws and legislation on this subject are really draconian and constraining for banks themselves, to force them to play nice.

The thing is, it also protects you in some ways - you can be warned that money you got is suspicious and could help you avoid or reduce the impact of fraud (pyramidal, investment, etc.) It's really easy to weed out victims from perpetrator in most cases - it's nice to know that you've been used. Obviously you'll say only stupid people are taken in on this, sure, but if stupid means lower than average, it's still 50% of people.

Also at the teller level, who do not have a overview of money flow, it is pretty much the only thing that can unequivocally identify (either unwillingness to fill it, lying on it or putting someone flagged without knowing - usually victims) - the other is the client behavior (stressed, evasive, etc.). Tellers are not expected to be investigators, so they fall back on the forms.

If you do not want to fill in the form, that's great, just don't give it to a bank - they must conform to international and US laws and the last thing a bank wants was to be cited not following those legislations - it is incredibly costly for them in terms of money and reputation. Anyone handling money professionally around the world must conform also.

I'm trying to just explain the situation and not the why, or is it effective, or not. Structuring detection or that form are the single most important risk factors and leads with a very high % to non-organized fraud and laundering (e.g. not coming from the mafia or incredibly organized efforts, which is the hardest to catch - they won't be stupid and structure or lie on those forms). At the end of the day, yes, it is usually the low hanging fruit for the feds and such to catch, but only because organized efforts are really hard and costly to catch. But this is another debate.

The bottom line, banks do not have to accept suspicious money (but they would if it was not for draconian laws) and not being willing to fill the form or structuring is the biggest indication of suspicion, and the only one they can identify right away. Don't bring them your money if you don't want to fill it.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

It's not illegal to deposit a big chunk of money, you just have to fill out a form explaining how you got it. Trying to avoid the form by splitting up the deposit is what gets you in trouble, but the trouble is just "gotta fill out the form". If you can't fill it out or you lie on it then you can find yourself in real trouble.

That kind of nosiness is the kind of thing that causes libertarianism... Please, get rid of the Nanny state and we won't have libertarians any more...

Re:Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

The problem is that they feel the need to investigate.

Its none of their business.

Re: Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

Well, having a small enough amount of money that you're worried about if it is near $10k or not is definitely suspicious. Where did this poor schmuck get this pittance, anyways? And why is he paranoid just over people knowing that he has it?

Oh of course, I forgot; if you did nothing wrong you shouldn't be worried about privacy.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Asgard]

Money laundering is obscuring where money came from. If you walk into a bank with $3M in cash, its going to be noticed. However, if you sell a ton of $Drug for $3M cash, and own a cash-heavy / inventory-light business such as a strip-club or casino, you inject the cash into that business over time with fake transactions and treat it as ordinary income. You pay taxes on it and to everyone it looks like you are operating a particularly successful business, and you have legit cash in the bank.

In this way you've obscured that the money came from an illicit deal and made it appear legitimate. Any business that can do a lot of turnover without a lot of inventory (as someone might notice if your bar is doing a ton of business but never buying inventory) is a candidate.

For larger non-cash sums you can do things with offshore fake businesses; make a 'startup' offshore, then sell it to another offshore entity and bank the cash / declare it on your taxes. The fact that it didn't really exist is hard for on-shore regulators to notice, and now you've got a bunch of legit taxes-paid cash in your wallet.

http://www.businessinsider.com... describes some more schemes.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[jandrese]

True. If you want criminals to avoid any chance of being caught while moving their loot around a Libertarian state is nearly ideal.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

I think usually it's drug money, or profits from racketeering, smuggling, etc. Sometimes it's coupled with tax dodges or fraud.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

True. If you want criminals to avoid any chance of being caught while moving their loot around a Libertarian state is nearly ideal.

The libertarian would argue that the government is the organized crime syndicate.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[RespekMyAthorati]

If it's not poorly defined then why can't people who are supposed to be professionals in preventing money laundering patently unable to explain it effectively?

That's easy.
They can explain it effectively, just not to a retard like you.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[RespekMyAthorati]

(perhaps because he was a very outspoken young earth creationist)

No, it was because he was a fucking crook.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[RespekMyAthorati]

The problem is that they feel the need to investigate. Its none of their business.

That's right. Crime is none of the justice department's business.

Retard.

Re:Where did the money come from?

[myowntrueself]

The problem is that they feel the need to investigate.

Its none of their business.

That's right. Crime is none of the justice department's business.

Retard.

The government gets to define crime so hey, they can bust you for whatever they like!

Depositing money can be a crime in itself? Rubbish. No wonder you have libertarians in north america, they are practically encouraged by the rampant interferance in daily life from the government.

They also produced Dumb and Dumber To

[elrous0]

So I imagine the feds will want all the profits from that too.

Re:"Asset recovery operation"

[whh3]

Notice what's even more funny: the name of the department doing the operation is the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.

WOW!

That is so appropriate.

[gurps_npc]

About the only thing more appropriate would be if the film was financed by the actual guy the movie was written about!

Re:That is so appropriate.

[NotInHere]

Maybe it is in fact? Maybe its not and this is just a PR stunt to boost the DVD sales.

Doing it right.

[Hylandr]

This is how you de-fund terrorism.

They got Al Capone on Tax evasion. :)

Re:Doing it right.

[dbIII]

They got Al Capone on Tax evasion. :)

The sad thing is that was only because he bribed the FBI but didn't think about bribing the IRS.

Re:Doing it right.

[dbIII]

Iran, contrary to the USA's claims, isn't a big supporter of terrorism

They gave away all their old rockets that couldn't hit shit to people that wanted to launch them at Israel.

Re:Doing it right.

[Hylandr]

Oh the Humanity! :) :) :) :P

Irony

[avandesande]

More Irony than Pennsylvania well water.....


That said, it was an entertaining movie and worth a watch.

Benihana

[ickleberry]

Are you f**in kidding me? Benny f*cking hana?!

ultimate case of

[Tablizer]

...field research

cash == guilty until proven innocent

[Thud457]

United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency

Suing inanimate objects is as silly as ascribing personhood to them. USA CRAY-CRAY. with guns.

Re:cash == guilty until proven innocent

[tsotha]

That's something completely different, though. You get these kinds of cases when you have cash on you and the government steals it because you might maybe be involved in some kind of crime which they can't identify.

The real question is...

[Sir_Eptishous]

...who is going to play Scorsese in the film about how they made a film about a wall street crook, and that film was financed by wall street crooks.

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Paul Giamatti!

Your tax dollars at work!

[Grand Facade]

Unbelievable, actually not really and even less surprising.

How much of my money will they spend to get my money back?

Re:Your tax dollars at work!

[guruevi]

They will spend close to 10B in lawyer fees to get your 1B back. If you have a receipt for the movie ticket, you'll get $1 refunded on your 2025 taxes.

Re:Your tax dollars at work!

[Grand Facade]

Then they get a promotion as heroes for prosecuiting those who took advantage of the mismanagment of my money.

Seems like they are prosecuiting the wrong party.

The ones who mis managed my money are at fault.

The movie never even made it on my radar.

Uh oh! Watch out!

[fustakrakich]

Tony Blair is going after the makers of Wag the Dog...

Get off it already

[s.petry]

Nobody can define it, or are you just too lazy to read? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If you are attempting to claim that examples of Government overreach and abuse make it hard to understand, I think your logic maker is broken.

That's Hollywood for ya

[tsotha]

This doesn't surprise me at all. Hollywood is an industry full of people who excoriate "the rich" for not paying taxes when all the while movies don't turn a profit, as far as the IRS is concerned.

Re:That's Hollywood for ya

[omnichad]

movies don't turn a profit, as far as the IRS is concerned.

The IRS still gets their cut, because the margins on the movie get paid out in services like special effects, distribution, production, etc. The people who lose on that are people who sign on to a movie for a cut of the movie's profits.

Re:That's Hollywood for ya

[tsotha]

Whenever you spend money somebody benefits, and ultimately taxes get paid. That's hardly a point in their favor.

Why here?

[bestweasel]

All very entertaining (I read the BBC story) but I'm at a loss to see the Slashdot angle.

Lawrence of Arabia foresaw all this

[sydbarrett74]

If the Saudi royal family are involved, count on it stinking to high heaven. T.E. Lawrence warned the rest of the world about the House of Saud's perfidy. But did anyone listen? We've been reaping the geopolitical effects for the better part of a century.

A sequel in the works?

[Neo-Rio-101]

So we can expect a sequel, I guess?

"The wolf of the wolf of Wall Street"

If that's also made with corrupt money, Hollywood can then keep the franchise going ad infinitum/nauseum whichever comes first!

Does this mean I get my money back?

[tensigh]

Since this was a Scorsese film, I waited in line to see it. After about 20 minutes into it I was shocked at how awful it was. If the money was financed illegally, can I file a class action law suit for the movie sucking so badly?