Money Laundering in a fantasy setting

[supermonkeyjoe]

Lets say someone gets a large amount of illicitly gained or counterfeit cash, what interesting new methods of laundering the money does the standard DnD setting provide? Does it even matter as much in a standard medieval fantasy?

An interesting plot point I could see happening was if the PCs get rewarded for a quest in the form of a fat sack of cash, when they try and spend it in town it is somehow identified as having been recently stolen, can the PCs clear their names and bring the real culprits to justice?

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, well, money laundering takes a few forms, and is used for a few reasons.

First, you have the type that launders money to remove traces of past crimes from it. In the fantasy world this can be both very easy or very hard.

In the modern world, money has a serial number to make it traceable. This makes counterfeiting hard and spending stolen cash difficult. In a fantasy setting, this would be hard to achieve. In theory, anyone with gold can create a mold and start striking coins. Currency is easy to make, so it is hard to track. Magic can solve everything though, and someone with gloves of object reading will be very hard to fool.

As for laundering money so it looks like legitimate money, well, the modern classics still function. An inn can "sell a few extra meals" or a gambling den can "have a few extra customers". Another way that money can be laundered is through a gold mine. Gold coins go in, and get mixed with the ore in the smelting process. The mine looks much more productive than it really is.

Then there is counterfiting. This is actually something the fantasy world has a better time at dealing with than the modern world. They value currency per it's weight in gold. All they care about is purity and weight. A good merchant with scales, a jewelers lenses, and a displacement tank (it can be small as it is just measuring coins) would be VERY hard to fool. On large purchases a merchant may even cut a coin in half to ensure it's composition.

It would be very easy for your party to come across a number of fake coins though. Lead filled cores, wrapped in gold. They would look and feel real, but under an appraise check, they would show as false. Then the hero's go to town and spend their ill gotten gains, but find that they didn't have real money, and they are in hot water with the local merchants, who don't care where the coins came from, just that they are fake.

In real life, the black market money world moves in several steps to launder stolen money. First, a group steals the cash. They then sell the hot cash to someone who can legitimize it for a fraction of it's value. They get something they can in turn legitimize, like spices, salt, or in the modern world, consumer electronics. Something they can move and sell easily.

[ILM]

Money laundering wouldn't exist in a med-fantasy setting. The whole point of laundering is to go around modern ways to trace money, but there's no such thing in a world where you pay everything in hard currency.

Take a stash of fake gold. You buy something with it; the hapless merchant ends up with fake gold. The only reasons you'd try to do anything more subtle than just use the fake money and walk away whistling is a) if the merchant has any chance to realize that you gave him illegitimate currency, and b) if he or the authorities have any way to trace it back to you and hunt you down. The former depends on your plot, basically; the latter depends on the magical means they can bring to bear. I guess Object Reading is the obvious answer, provided that you're not considered a 'casual owner' of the fake gold. Are psionics in play, for starters? If so, are there any ways to counter Object Reading?

[Lord Vukodlak]

Fouredged Sword does a very good job of explaining why counterfeiting coins in D&D falls flat on its face. The fact that D&D for simplicity makes all coins weigh 1/50lb making counterfeiting coins impractical. Even PC's with no ranks in appraise and negative intelligence would instantly notice the gold coins they were paid with aren't the same size and/or weight as every other gold coin they've handled.

For your plot idea I suggest instead of cash use art work. It can be forged, it can turn out to be stolen or if the party lacks appraise the employer can just flat out lie about the worth of the payment.

[Stux]

The party might want to launder gold or other currency for a number of reasons, though whether they apply will depend on your campaign. Perhaps it is ancient currency that comes from sacred tombs that should not be disturbed, or is marked with the crest of a country the kingdom you are in is at war with, or they are stolen ingots that belong to royalty and are stamped with the royal seal.

In all these instances, the easiest non-magical solution is to melt them down and re-cast them as something more inconspicuous.

Un-marked coins might raise a few eyebrows amongst honest merchants, depending on the laws of the land you are in, so some skill at forgery may be required.

[Humble Master]

Another instance of PC's wanting to launder money would be if they didn't want people to know they had a lot of money. Lets say they steal a lot of gems and whatnot from a rich church/business/noble ect. Well as long as the institution that they steal from is relatively powerful they are going to tell all their merchant friends to look out for someone making large purchases with gems. So, if the PC's start buying expensive magic items, as PC's who have a lot of money tend to do, with the stolen gems then the merchants report them to the institution who then sends their muscle to go 'interrogate' the PC's.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Un-marked coins might raise a few eyebrows amongst honest merchants, depending on the laws of the land you are in, so some skill at forgery may be required.

Maybe... but adventurers travel far and wide you could stamp the gold with whatever symbol you wished and simply claim it came from a faraway Kingdom. Unless the Kingdom doesn't accept foreign currency period it shouldn't be an issue. I had a wizard once who used fabricate to remint coins(and bars) to appear to have been minted by the Kingdom Calamar which did not exist I completely made it up.

[Fouredged Sword]

Also, for many fantasy kingdoms that DO semi-regulate their internal currency, all you have to do to convert your unmarked gold bars to coin is a quick trip to the local currency changer who will strike your gold into coin for a small fee. It sticks his good name on the purity and weight of the coin, and makes local merchants who deal in his coin commonly more assured the coins are full value.

He may even have enough coin on hand to do a direct buy of your gold, though for large transfers you will likely need to wait for him to make enough coin to complete the transaction.

[HalfQuart]

It could just be that the PCs show up with a pile of really shiny gold coins that they were paid in, which raises suspicion because a wagon of the king's newly minted gold was hijacked recently. Surely most coins would be dirty, tarnished*, or dinged up after a lengthy circulation, so a lot of new coins under these circumstances would be suspicious.

I don't think it would be hard for the PCs to conceal the origins of the money through magic or mundane means, but it would provide for a plot hook since they'd be unlikely to think to do it until trouble arose.

* yes, I realize solid 24k gold doesn't tarnish. RAW, I assume "gold coins" are solid gold, but in reality/historically gold coins were often an alloy of around 22k and were indeed subject to tarnishing.

[Jerthanis]

Counterfeiting money wasn't the money-sabotage method of theft back in the day to my understanding. I think the big thing was coin shaving. When coins are made of real copper, silver and gold, you can shave a sliver off the edges of each coin that comes by you and be left eventually with a profit in precious metals.

However, the idea of 'laundering' money could come up when you have two governments at war with one another, and trying to spend gold stamped with the face of the king of the enemy land could be dicey. However, in these cases, you can probably find merchant guilds willing to trade out your money for a slight profit since they can take it to places it IS valuable.

[Fouredged Sword]

There where simple methods of countering shaving or powdering of currency.

(powdering is the practice if putting a coin into a sandpaper bag so gold dust collects at the bottom, slower, but less obvious than shaving)

First, coins can be minted with a textured edge and sides. This makes the practice of shaving and powdering less profitable, as the coin becomes obviously faked.

Then, most merchants assumed that coins would be shaved or powdered, and traded based on weight. A merchant's scale was used to determine the value of coins worth any real significant value.

The main problem was actually purity. Even if you tried to make pure gold or silver coins, getting a high purity was hard and expensive. Many kingdoms only ensured their coins to a purity, and the carot system was used to specify the gold weight of the coin compared to it's total weight. Lying about the purity of your gold was harder to catch, especially if the difference is small.

That is where money changers came in. The staked their good name on the purity of their coins, and using the coins of a known money changer would provide you with a better price as merchants didn't pad their cost to account for misstated purity.

I would recommend you watch the anime Spice and Wolf for some nice economics discussions in a fantasy setting with a side of fan service.

[Deophaun]

Then, most merchants assumed that coins would be shaved or powdered, and traded based on weight. A merchant's scale was used to determine the value of coins worth any real significant value.
Which is where the system was gamed. The term carat comes from the carob seed, which was used for weights because it was publicly assumed that carob seeds had a uniform weight. This, of course, was a lot of hokum and merchants knew it. So, they actually used two sets of carob seeds. The heavier ones they'd use for buying (The gold only weighs 12 carob seeds) and the lighter ones they'd use for selling (Now it weighs 14 carob seeds, go figure).

[Spuddles]

My favorte way to launder wealth in DnD is to turn it into magic items that I then use to acquire more wealth.

Force majeure, mother****ers.

[Telonius]

Melt it down, then Fabricate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm) it into crafted jewelry. Finished goods are almost always worth more than the raw materials, and jewelry is no exception. A small gold bracelet is worth 55gp, per the Treasure table (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/treasure.htm#tableArtObjects). (No idea how much an actual gold bracelet weighs, but I'd be very surprised if it's more than a pound). Or, buy a bunch of Garnets (100gp) and Fabricate yourself a "gold dragon comb with red garnet eye" to sell for 1050gp.

[Malroth]

To launder 10,000 stolen, traceable GP research some ancient 8000gp art object somewhere and find some wandering magic item laden murderhobos to retrieve it for you. Give them the 10,000 Bogus GP and take your legitimiate archeological find and sell it to the museum.