> Aren't the largest criminals best at laundering money?

Interestingly, not with the existing laws. Since you can move up to $10,000 per day without any reports being filed, a criminal laundering under $3.6m/year could theoretically fly under the radar.

> And doesn't the war on drugs create violent criminals?

Yes, but there are plenty of other crimes unrelated to drugs that bring in money. I'm all for decriminalization of drugs (it's a health problem, not a crime problem), but that doesn't mean I'm in favour of allowing money laundering.

I just think you might be missing the forest for the trees here. There's lots of reasons not to want money laundering to be legal. Think of all the other places illicit money comes from; I want those crimes not to pay very well at all.

Try depositing $9999 at a time in a bank. You'll end up getting prosecuted for trying to circumvent the report laws.

Yeah in Canada they have "suspicious transaction reports" where your banker is like "I dunno what's going on here, but someone ought to look at this guy"

Banks are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports for any suspicious (very broadly defined) deposits or withdrawals even if the amount is much less than $10k. The feds can also temporarily designate certain geographic regions as 'high risk' which means banks in those regions must comply with much more stringent reporting requirements.

It is also illegal to move money in such a way as to evade the reporting requirements ('structuring', what they nailed Dennis Hastert for).

> Interestingly, not with the existing laws. Since you can move up to $10,000 per day without any reports being filed, a criminal laundering under $3.6m/year could theoretically fly under the radar.

Theoretically!

> Yes, but there are plenty of other crimes unrelated to drugs that bring in money.

> Think of all the other places illicit money comes from

All very handwavey. Whenever I've read anything about money laundering it's about drugs, terrorism, & organised crime. And isn't a large part of organised crime drugs?

> allowing money laundering

This has nothing to do with money laundering. Money laundering requires that the money is dirty. This is essential making private wealth illegal regardless of the legality of the source.