Placement

Criminal funds often start as cash, which is bulky, hard to explain and risky to carry. Placement gets it off the street. Typical methods are splitting it into small deposits, mixing it with takings of a cash-heavy business, buying high-value goods such as gold or cars, exchanging it at currency bureaux, paying it into casinos or smuggling it abroad. It is the stage at which the money is closest to the crime and easiest to link back, so it is the point where regulation concentrates: cash reporting thresholds, customer checks at account opening, and staff alertness to odd deposits. Banks and other regulated businesses are asked to watch for deposits that do not fit a customer's profile. As cards, online payments and digital assets spread, cash placement is less central in some places, though still common. The stage is followed by layering and integration. Controls are heaviest here, because cash is easiest to link to its source before it mixes with other funds; a deposit that slips through is far harder to catch later.

A street gang has 60,000 in cash from sales. Members deposit amounts of 3,000 to 4,500 at many branches, and others buy prepaid cards with the rest. A bank's monitoring tool adds up the deposits across linked accounts and flags the pattern of regular cash payments by unrelated people into the same few accounts.