It's a perfect business for money laundering. You can fabricate large expenses and charge outrageous prices. It's a lot like real estate in that regard - there's no "industry standard" for any of it so high prices aren't really attention getters.
For instance, Trump has a condo worth $250,000. He sells it to an investment group for $2,000,000. He waits about a month then buys the same condo back for 1,650,000.
The money is laundered. They have a fresh, legitimate $1,650,000 and Trump pockets $350,000 for his "services". He then resells the same condo to another investment group and the same thing happens all over again.
The Russians know however that the real estate gravy train is fast coming to an end. So they get a few MJ stores.
- They buy lighting fixtures from their own lighting company at 10 times the going rate. Say, 25,000 dollars per fixture vs. the 2,500 they actually cost.
- They buy fertilizers at 100 times the going rate from their own fertilizer companies.
- They charge much higher prices for their products. Even if they never sell them legitimately because of the high price, their books will reflect thousands of sales for huge amounts virtually non-stop.
They can launder millions of dollars through a single store with relative ease. And it would be years before any suspicion was aroused if ever if they do it properly and don't get too greedy.
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