Church Money Laundering.

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Hi yall,
I found out that many churches are fronts for money laundering by organized crime. I can see why churches are near-perfect for this kind of criminal behavior. Churches are not required to fill out a detailed breakdown of their finances called a Form 990 unlike all other non-profits. They dont have to tell the IRS about their finances. Also churches typically take in large amounts of cash every week. In Many churches there is a culture where financial transparency of the finances is taboo for various reasons. Many churches never give their members a detailed breakdown where every dollar goes. Some denominations are more likely to be this way.

Also church members tend to trust their church leadership and there is a culture of submitting to the leaders in many churches. Another thing is churches tend to be very forgiving if one of their own strays. Many churches have a culture of not going to authorities whenever crime is happening that is being committed by their own. Churches are automatically tax-exempt and dont have to pay taxes on their property and tithes and offerings in most cases. I am sure many of the Megachurches and even lots of small churches are involved in this crime. I saw a stat that 20 percent or 1 in 5 of all churches in America are used to launder money. Many of the donations are anonymous.

I dont know if the above stat is true or not but it could be. In extreme cases the church leadership has the members running drug and prostitution rings and using the church to launder the money so the whole church basically becomes a gang. The likelihood of a given church being audited is so insanely low because it requires high ranking federal officials granting permission to do the audit. Churches can be atractive to transnational criminal organizations because they routinely send a lot of money overseas to the Developing world in dangerous high crime areas. i imagine at least some of these use the church to send drug money overseas or maybe back to the states.

The churches can invest drug money tax free in the stock market if they want if they are that criminal and they have cleaned the money. Also churches can use dirty money to open for-profit businesses and conduct legal gambling operations like bingo and raffles to fundraise. Maybe a drug dealer or arms dealer or bookie will put some money in the plate and have his brother or dad be a minister or janitor at the church and turn the crime money into "legit money." Crooked Corrupt Churches can also use the drug money to buy tax-free real estate. Another way is a church will have its drug dealer member set up a construction company and charge the church or maybe a church or church affiliate will do fictitious services and laundering money that way. However I think there may be a limit to how much a criminal enterprise can scale its money laundering operations that are done by most churches because it would look suspicious if you have millions a month flowing into the treasury of a little country church. Sadly my denomination the Church of Christ is vulnerable to money laundering because of some of the reasons I listed in this write-up. I am sure Jesus would flip the tables again if he was in some of those churches.

I am sure some churches and reverends get kickbacks from money laundering. Also pastors can use benevolence and other earmarked funds for money laundering.

As somebody who was involved with churches for 30 years, Larger Christian sects and other large religious groups (Muslims and Jews for example) technically don't need to work with organised crime because they already make a windfall from:
- tithes
- philanthropic donations
- paying no tax

In the case of the catholic church massive bequests from kings and catholic merchants accumulated over a millennia and in colonial times huge government land grants in new colonies. I suspect the catholic church is the wealthiest single organisation in the world dwarfing the likes of Blackrock or Elon Musk.

Like I said, no need to launder proceeds of crime but if they did get generous donations from "good Catholics" like mafia dons or Mexican cartels then god will accept that money and channel it to the Vatican where it will serve his will.

Of course no religious org "needs" to be involved in criminal activity. But some religious orgs are. And religious orgs also vary a lot as to how transparent they are about their finances.

Unfortunately I suspect that the recent overall trend has been toward less transparency, especially with the rise of "New Apostolic Reformation" churches.

some good old money laundering schemes and what not