My understanding of money laundering is the baddies have huge truck loads of untaxed dirty cash and they need to somehow legitimize it to get it into the bank. E.g. from Breaking Bad: drug money → car wash with phony sales → bank. Once it’s in the bank, it’s on the radar.
The linked article says that withdrawing cash is a money laundering red flag. Can someone please explain why that is? AFAIK, if the money is in the bank it must already be clean (or appear so), no?
Money laundering isn’t really for getting money into the bank. It’s purpose is to legitimize the money with a paper trail so it doesn’t look too suspicious when you are spending large amounts on things where the source of the money may be scrutinized.