[novok]

AML regulations prevent about %0.05 of criminal proceeds from being 'harvested' and the cost of these compliance regimes costs vastly more than the value they bring. And it enables a vast financial surveillance system and a huge industry of AML analysts doing pointless busy work writing SARs nobody cares about.

The US mafia declined because of the rico act and the fact that there was less racism and better integration of italian americans. The current ethnic crime groups of today are different.

IMO AML is security theatre, much like the post 9/11 flying regulations making everyone's lives worse, especially if your name is Mohammed sending money to family back home in the home country.

[wpietri]

> AML regulations prevent about %0.05 of criminal proceeds from being 'harvested' and the cost of these compliance regimes costs vastly more than the value they bring.

I look forward to your proving these two very numerical claims. But you can't just count existing criminal proceeds. That'd be saying, "The current level of speeding is so low that we can get rid of traffic cops." You have to measure the crime prevented, too.

[novok]

Read the studies the original article links to?

AML is a boil the ocean way to prevent crime, except the ocean isn't being boiled because there isn't enough energy to actually boil the financial system. Instead it just annoys everyone with the financial equivalent of the ineffective TSA, where the TSA's own auditors bring everything and anything through with ease.

With all the money and human time used to prevent crime via AML, that could've been redirected to far more productive things. Especially in a country like the USA, where crime prevention issues are fairly obvious but not acted upon, such as robbery, murder, assault, rape, car break ins, property theft, damage, etc in California which aren't things effected much by AML either way.