My miserable encounter with Money Laundering using Bitcoin

Here I am, a lost girl in a new city looking for a new job. My educational background is in business so here I am, looking online at different job postings, really just trying to find my way. After several submissions of my resume, and countless Cover Letters being written, HALLELUJAH, I get a response from one of the postings I applied for.

This job looks promising, it pays very well, and on top of that, I get a small percentage of commission for each transaction I complete, to go on top of the excellent hourly wage I'll already be making. Perfect, this is it! I have found my way. Now I can live easy.

Communicating with a Hiring Manager via email, I sent all the necessary applications required to start the job. At that point, I got a call from the man I had been communicating with. The Hiring Manager, Alex, told me that their office in the city was not opening for another couple of weeks, but I can get the training started from home. Alright, I'm not complaining, I get to start a new job and work from home?! Amazing!

That's when Alex explained to me what I will be doing. He said he would be sending me money by email money transfer, or e-transfer, for me to withdraw from my bank account. Then, I would be withdrawing that money from the bank, taking 4% of that money as my own in commissions, and sending the rest of it through a Bitcoin ATM to a client.

Sounds simple enough, sure. So I get an email, with an e-transfer for $2000. At this point, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable accepting $2000 in my personal banking account to do business transactions, but whatever, if this is what I need to do while waiting for the office to open up, then fine. I accept the e-transfer for $2000, thus depositing it into my account. Then, I hopped on over to the local bank, and withdrew $1920, the other $80 being my 4% commission. I emailed Alex and told him I now have the $1920 in cash on hand. Alex responds to me with a QR code that I am to scan at the Bitcoin ATM machine. Basically, I take this bar code, scan it at the Bitcoin ATM so they know where the bitcoin is going, then I insert the cash into the machine to buy Bitcoin. And this is exactly what I did, I input $1920 in cash into a bitcoin ATM, got a receipt saying how much Bitcoin I bought, and the code of the person I'm sending the bitcoin to. And voila, one transaction completed.

Then I just realized how amazing this really is. I just made $80 for an hour or less of work, and that's not even including the hourly wage I'll get paid on top of that. Bring on the next transaction!

Alex promptly sends me the next e-transfer, this time for $3000. I follow the same steps, withdraw the cash, get the QR code, send $2880 worth of Bitcoin to the client via the Bitcoin ATM (the other $120 being my 4% commission). Once again, I've completed this in less than an hour, and now I've just made another $120. I'm just loving this, $200 made in less than 2 hours! At this point, it's around 5:00 and Alex only works 9 to 5, so we shut it down, and continue in the morning.

That was such a great night. I call my mom, all excited about the kind of money I'm going to be making doing this. I go to sleep a happy little baby, and I'm telling you, I hadn't slept better in months!

The next morning rolls around, and I get another e-transfer at 9am, this time for $3000 again. I'm about to go withdraw it and then I start thinking to myself, "Can I really be doing this? Can I really just keep withdrawing large amounts of cash from my bank account over and over again?". Honestly, I started just Googling what I could about constantly withdrawing large amounts of cash, but I didn't really find much information.

I decided to make my way to the bank and go for it. I go to withdraw $2880 (again, $120 in commission), and I start getting questioned about why I am withdrawing $8000 over the span of less than 24 hours. I told them what I was doing with it and they would not allow me to withdraw the cash from the teller. It was funny, because I was just thinking I could be questioned for this, and sure enough, here it is.

I emailed Alex to let him know I can't withdraw this $3000 from the teller, and the bank ATM has a limit of a $1000 cash withdrawal. I informed him that if he wish, I could just e-transfer the money back to him. I'm a good girl, I'm not going to just take this $3000 and run.

He calls me after I send the email, completely baffled that I cannot withdraw the money. I told him I can just sent it back but he said he can't take the money back as cash. He then tells me he will talk to his Accounting department and call me back with a solution.

Now I'm completely suspicious of what's going on here. He can't take the money back? Maybe he doesn't want the money traced back to him? That's when it hit me. I think I'm Money Laundering by sending money through Bitcoin ATM, because it would be so hard to track where the bitcoin is coming from when using a Bitcoin ATM machine.

Now I'm really nervous and I just want to get rid of this money, yet I can't send this money back to where it came from. What do I do?

Alex calls me back and tells me to send the money through Moneygram online. He tells me the information of the person I would be sending the money to and it's to some person in the Czech Republic. Okay, now this is REALLY sketchy. But, I try to do it anyway, because I want to be done with this money. I'm not 100% sure it's Money Laundering, but something definitely seems fishy.

I try to send the money online through Moneygram, and then the site tells me that the transaction is under review. About 30 minutes later, I go to a restaurant with a friend. When I go to pay for my meal at the end of the dinner, my debit (interac) card does not work. My account has been blocked by the bank!

I email Alex, angered about what happened, but I don't get a response, and I never hear from him again.

Two weeks pass and the money in my account is still on hold. I've tried to contact the bank several times but all they tell me is that the fraud department is investigating my account, and the money will not be available until further notice.

At that point, I get a visit from the police, and they tell me they have reason to believe I am Money Laundering. I told them what happened, showed them all my emails, explained that I wasn't aware what I was doing, and after a lot of time wasted, and a lot of back and forth, I was cleared.

To this very day, my account is still on hold and an investigation is still ongoing into this. Honestly, I'm not even 100% I'm cleared of all of this yet. I really hope they find Alex and he gets what he deserves. I'm still ashamed to have been conned into doing criminal activity for someone. Let this be a lesson to you all, because believe me, this was a nightmare.

Please feel free to comment about this. I'd like to hear what people have to say!