Crime and Money: Understanding the Logic of Routine Activity Theory

This research report discusses the logic of routine activity theory and how it relates to crime and money laundering. It also explores the various methods used for disguising and laundering crime proceeds, such as export of currency, disguise of ownership, and false justification. The report presents data on the frequency of these methods and the uses of profits by UK drug dealers. The article is based on a study by Levi (2015) and provides valuable insights into the topic.

Running Head: Research Report
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Crime and Money

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The theory which is discussed in the article is named as “logic of routine activity theory”.
The theory advices that the levels and the patterns of crime can be understood only in terms of
the ways in which the people behave and give chances to offend, surveillance and expected
interventions by individual. The people who repay to those who have actually financed the
crimes are themselves involved in the money laundering offence. It is unfortunate that the
analysis of the effect on investing resources on floor and then of anti money laundering
processes on crime levels has actually established very less notice both empirically and
theoretically. According to Halliday in 2014, he founded that there is very less proof collected
about such type of effects.
There are some methods of disguising and laundering crime proceeds used. They are: export
of currency, disguise of ownership, false justification (loan back, payroll, speculation and book
keeping), untraceable.
Export of Currency: Importing and exporting of the transactions is a cliché amalgamation
technique used in disguising the money laundering particularly for moving illegal funds in
between the countries. The launder sets up the import firm in the foreign country and also export
firm in the home country. The export firm exports the goods in the foreign nation import firm.
The import firm sends illegal funds for paying for the goods.
Disguise of Ownership: In this method, the actual owners or criminals disguise the real
ownership and then control the proceeds of the conduct in terms of crime by making the
proceeds to have come from legitimate source.
False Justification:
 Loan Back: It is money laundering ignoring scheme in which the money is deposited in
the foreign bank and then again borrowed back by shell firm which is controlled by
holder of the bank account.
 Payroll: Payroll agents could easily feel vulnerable to money laundering in few ways.
People who claim that they are the employer and employees both. Creation of ghost
employees etc.
 Book Keeping: Book keeping sometimes can make the illegal money laundering look
legitimate on papers. Accountants and book keepers can unknowingly be used as the

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tools in the process of money laundering. The layering is actually the act of concealing
the source or the inception point of the money by number of ways of doing critical and
complicated transactions and a little bit of bookkeeping tricks.
There are a few types of data presented in the article. They are as follows:
 In table 1, there are a types of methods displayed which are related to the disguising and
laundering crime proceeds and their frequency of being used are shown. Example: Export
of currency is the most used methods in money laundering. The frequency shown is 31
for this method and the second most used method is the disguise of ownership. The
frequency given for disguise of ownership is 10.
 In table 2, there are uses of the profits by U.K. drug dealers shown in which the uses of
profits are profits spent on lifestyle, invested in drug trafficking, invested in property,
profits laundered via legitimate entrepreneurship, profits spent on drug habits and spent
overseas etc (Levi, 2015).

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References
Levi, M. (2015). Money for Crime and Money from Crime: Financing crime and laundering
crime proceeds. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research , 21 (2), 275-297.