is a ma maniere a front?
Matt Halfhill
Nice Kicks
Feds: James Whitner of Social Status, A Ma Maniere Involved in Mone...
Federal agents allege that a owner of Social Status played a central role in an international money laundering operation totaling $32 Million.
5 Replies
@walker important news break
Already mentioned in gen chat. Most likely not a front per se but in addition to being a normal business, also used as a front to launder money. The federal indictment is not waffling at all. We will see how it shakes out of course
ya
(title of this thread half joke)
yup
idk what I'm looking at, I just wanna know if he's fucked and if AMM is fucked
The complaint is not in particularly dense legalese
The guy running the company has been, among other things, purchasing shoes from nike (not stated but "shoe company in oregon"), contracturally not allowed to be sold to resellers, then shipping them to resellers in china. This is part of a long chain of money laundering, both from illegal things, but also from chinsee nationals not being allowed to move much money out of china legally, so they use services where they deposit RMB in china and get USD (written as US currency, ie, cash) in the US. So not only is he assisting money laundering but he is, more generally, working to move money around, which he is not allowed to do without registering as an entity that moves money around and complying with the thousands of regulations about moving money around.
Is he screwed? I have no idea, I'm not a lawyer. I assume he will claim that all of this specific export business may have been contracturally impermissible but not criminal, and that if someone else uses shoes he sells to launder money it's not his problem, and at worst he's only responsible for moving money around, not laundering it, not stealing, not embezzling, etc, so slap on wrist please thank you. But who knows? Not me. Other people do
was more a q for Walker but ty for the summary gimp