Random contractor payment question

[ghostrunner]

I’ve made one withdrawal and instantly felt like a criminal and got paranoid. I felt like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas looking for the helicopter. Had to make 5 withdrawals and that wasn’t even the max.

[haltz]

Regarding the tax dodge, surely they’ll have trouble spending these quantities of cash directly as cash? Aren’t they going to need to make large deposits that generate a bank record the same as a check? The record won’t say where the cash came from, but surely the IRS can still make a case on you for large unreported cash income.

Yeah that's the tricky part, you have to launder the money or try and find a way to spend it that can't be easily tracked.

Maybe you pay under the table wages, have some investment property you pay subcontractors to work on in cash, your kid needs a car, you pay for groceries in cash, you want a boat, a retaining wall in your backyard, have an expensive hobby, who knows. Part of it you could hold back and part deposit. Maybe the job is just not that profitable on paper.

I know a guy who bought a house for his family after having his first kid in a very nice part of town that needed a lot of work. Partly because he's a contractor he's getting good, cash deals on work from his buddies to rehab it using money he'd squirreled away to pay for it. Another way to skin that cat would be to not go the cash route but to make those payments into business expenses and hope no one looks to closely I guess. That's the easier and more common game to play I think.

I think you see that expense trap often. A certain type of small business owner, the kind of person that Republicans prey on, is incredibly averse to paying taxes and they'd rather buy toys or crank up their expenses, maybe rationalize a new van, spend money on [expletive] they don't need than show a nice profit at the end of the year and put money in a retirement account. It's easy to do because you should put some money back into your business and if you hate paying taxes that's not a problem for you.

[G. Keenan]

Nobody here nor any of these contractors can use Zelle? I've paid most of the contractors who've worked in my place through Zelle in the past year. You can send up to $6500 per transaction and I think something like $13 or $16k max in a 30-day period. Beats a dozen trips to the ATM.

[CardsofSTL]

Cash is King

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Nobody here nor any of these contractors can use Zelle? I've paid most of the contractors who've worked in my place through Zelle in the past year. You can send up to $6500 per transaction and I think something like $13 or $16k max in a 30-day period. Beats a dozen trips to the ATM.

But that goes through a bank. Even if it didn't, you at least have a digital record on some server(s) that will never die. Which is what someone wanting cash is trying to avoid.

The irony for me is, I bet if you asked some of those contractors "Would you take crypto instead?" the number that would say yes is non-zero. And yet, the traceability of that transaction is built right into the software for any hacker to see from now til the cockroaches die out (never).

[G. Keenan]

After much deliberation, I've decided that @ghostrunner 's contractor is in the mob.

[ghostrunner]

Man the latest twist in this is something else.

In the midst of me getting cash out and texting back and forth a bit about when to pay, I get an email apparently from this same guy suddenly offering the option of an ACH/Bank transfer because their accounts are under audit. I should say/repeat that at no time up until now has there been anything off or shady about these people.

I email back confused because we've already been discussing by text that we'd arrange cash payment. So I respond, ok, that sounds good because fewer trips to the ATM, but can I still get the cash discount?

Contractor calls me back seeming unsure what i'm talking about, and I ask about the transfer but he says no we can't do that. He's been busy and scatterbrained this whole time so I just dismiss it but we basically re-confirm on the cash and the day I'll bring payment to their office.

Then I get a new email back saying the transfer payment is fine, blah blah blah, and it has a routing and account number with a national credit union and it says "Kindly forward payment...." Takes me a few minutes before I focus on those two things and I realized he's been hacked. "Kindly" = fraud, for those who don't know. No wonder he was confused.

I let him know, and he's all flustered and I tell him he needs to change his password and use 2-factor authentication. I was able to see their email is through Office 365 so that should be easy enough to do and it'll eliminate most of this type of hacking.

Finally I also realize my address is in this chain of emails because it's on the original invoice, and I've discussed getting a bunch of cash out. I'm paranoid enough about this cash already, so I send a fake reply telling this guy "Hey I went to your office and paid the cash I got out, and they said it was ok to pay the rest on credit card, so we're all set."

Also tried to report the account to the bank, but they can't really do anything yet beyond noting it.

[Arthur Dent]

Wow! Glad you caught that one in time. I don’t know what would happen if you needed to try and get the bank to reverse the transfer.

I can’t believe the bank can’t do anything more than just make a note. Seems like the ACH info should be easily traceable back to a person who is committing a serious crime. Shouldn’t some minimal effort be put into trying to arrest a person caught red handing trying to steal $19k?

[ghostrunner]

Wow! Glad you caught that one in time. I don’t know what would happen if you needed to try and get the bank to reverse the transfer.

I can’t believe the bank can’t do anything more than just make a note. Seems like the ACH info should be easily traceable back to a person who is committing a serious crime. Shouldn’t some minimal effort be put into trying to arrest a person caught red handing trying to steal $19k?

Maybe they’ll investigate further. He was saying it’s tough because they can’t tell the account holder is involved. (Though at minimum they’re affected and the account should probably be locked until they can speak to them you’d think). He also called me back to verify the amount that would’ve been transferred. Not sure what that’s worth.

[Arthur Dent]

Wow! Glad you caught that one in time. I don’t know what would happen if you needed to try and get the bank to reverse the transfer.

I can’t believe the bank can’t do anything more than just make a note. Seems like the ACH info should be easily traceable back to a person who is committing a serious crime. Shouldn’t some minimal effort be put into trying to arrest a person caught red handing trying to steal $19k?

Maybe they’ll investigate further. He was saying it’s tough because they can’t tell the account holder is involved. (Though at minimum they’re affected and the account should probably be locked until they can speak to them you’d think). He also called me back to verify the amount that would’ve been transferred. Not sure what that’s worth.

I’m sure this is like a much bigger stakes version of the time when I all but caught my neighbor stealing power tools from me and I naively called the police only to learn that zero effort would put into responding to the crime.

In this case, I feel like it would take minimal effort to have a decent shot at nabbing a crook who has very likely stolen many thousands of dollars from people. You could put some kind of hold on the account, check that account’s history to see if there are other transactions for prior iterations of the scam or evidence that the account was being accessed by someone other than the holder, or even try and turn it into a sting where you catch them trying to withdraw the money.

I feel like a situation where you can do crimes, and even if you’re caught, probably nothing happens is not great. In the tool theft theft situation, an official stern lecture and please give back the stolen goods would go most of the way. In this case, even if you can’t make a airtight case, wouldn’t you want to at least do enough that the person would see trying again as likely to get themselves in serious trouble?