Dirty Money Laundering Changes

[Cleetus McSkeeter]

Hey guys I enjoy the new Money Laundering system, but I but believe there is room for improvement for both PD and Civ 

 

What we like about the new system:

• Makes cleaning not Instantaneous, makes things way more realistic
• Gives the opportunity for PD to raid more often, until recently I have never been apart from a PD raid
• Adds risk to cleaning
• Adds RP to hire guns 
• Brings RP to the store areas then at 2/6

Don't like about the new system:

• Only able to clean 1k dirty/min This means in a full storm cycle you are only able to clean 360k storm to storm and constantly defending it from robberies and from PD from shutting it down
  • Suggestion of change: Change it to 10-20k/min meaning you can clean the money (to be able to cover the fees of the hired members and the loss of just fines) a lot faster but also keep the old system where a certain % of the transaction get flagged by the police. 
  • Another suggestion: To avoid someone minimizing the risk of just putting all their dirty money all at once to avoid police raid percentages make it so if you try to clean more than 30k at once the Police automatically gets triggered for suspicious activities (>30k 100% probability of alert)

Reasons for changes:

                  With our math 

• 20k per hire guns X4
• 10k in fines if you get caught
• Est. 5k principal for rent
• 1k/inventory pack
• This is a 96k investment being only able to clean 360k maximum.
   

Edited May 1, 2019 by Cleetus McSkeeter

[Dorian_Fendrel]

That sounds like a great investment! 96k to make 360k! Also, keep in mind, this system is designed to create more roleplay, not to allow players to make more money. A lot of players hyperfocus on money, money, money, but that is just a means. A tool you can use to create MORE roleplay. Don't ever make it your one and only goal my friend. I think the system is a great addition, it will cause a lot more interactions with Civs, as well as PD, and always with EMS. In time, the admin team will monitor how it happens, but the goal here isn't to allow more money to be moved, its to create more interactions, and it definitely succeeded in that.

[keebler_mfn_elf]

I 100% agree the new Dirty Money system is way to slow.

@ $1,000 per min and the risk that comes with it it should allow you to clean more per min. I know that there are Business Owners that are sitting on over a mill dirty money; and they do not want to have to sit at a store for 6 hours to just get $360,000 cleaned with out any loses.

I do like that it takes time but for the amount you can clean, but $10,000 + per min would be a lot better.

Other things that would make dirty money more appealing to business; is if the cops did not get triggered if a player buys an item at stock or less then stock value, with dirty money. This would make it so that business owners want to rent and keep their stores stocked with goods. but once they get greedy and increase the price of goods the IRS sees flaws in their books and they can get raided.

This is my main idea because a small time way for someone to clean money is to go to  a store and buy a $1 pack of gum with a $20 or $50 bill, they take a loss of $1 but they get the change of clean unmarked bills. people have dont the same thing buy buying used cars in one city and selling them in another just causes the marked bills to change hands.

With what I have proposed, allows someone to go to a rented business buy a repair kit  per say for $150, then go to a Green 24/7 and sell it back for $135. They lose $15 but, they now have clean money to put in the bank.

 

If people like this Idea please build on it, I am trying to make Dirty money a thing that is worth while, but the way it was before.

[keebler_mfn_elf]

2 minutes ago, Dorian_Fendrel said:

That sounds like a great investment! 96k to make 360k! Also, keep in mind, this system is designed to create more roleplay, not to allow players to make more money. A lot of players hyperfocus on money, money, money, but that is just a means. A tool you can use to create MORE roleplay. Don't ever make it your one and only goal my friend. I think the system is a great addition, it will cause a lot more interactions with Civs, as well as PD, and always with EMS. In time, the admin team will monitor how it happens, but the goal here isn't to allow more money to be moved, its to create more interactions, and it definitely succeeded in that.

I am a business owner, you have to also measure the risk vs the reward. The risk before was very low, now it is stupid high. as a test I did a small clean of $40K not even 5 min later the cops were there raiding the place. yes it gives more chance for the cops to stop the cleaning, but 90% of the time player rent out a business and leave it, same goes with if they are cleaning money. you can not say you are willing to sit in one place for 6 hrs 264K profit, you can do a lot more things in that amount of time. and a lot of people dont have that kind of time.

Also as a PD officer do you  want to have a 6 hr shoot out over a 24/7 that is trying to clean 360K cash. I dont its not worth the Risk for that kind of RP. 

Mainly the new system has but a halt to any money cleaning.

[Dorian_Fendrel]

So no, I agree with you, shootouts for cleaning doesn't make any sense, and neither does 10k per minute for cleaning. I believe it's designed in a way for you not to clean thousands upon thousands of dollars during each sitting, but rather spread it out.  Perhaps a fix would be to modify the alert percentage to the PD, or perhaps change the algorithm to when PD is notified of cleaning. The old system was heavily used, and inflated the economy, in my opinion. I think this new way will take some time, and will change the drug market. Hopefully for the better. However, with the more risk of the cleaning, it would make illegal drug sells, like meth and coke, less profitable and less worth it, and increase weed, and legal jobs. So.. it's kind of a tough issue. I think we as a community can come up with better ideas though.

[r3v0Lt55]

Was talking about this with some people and we were discussing adding an additional step on the PD side of things. So the thing I've never got my head wrapped around since the beginning of the store raiding mechanic was how a dirty transaction in a 24/7 store gets shared over a local PD dispatch system. Adding in a kind of informant mechanic not only would increase the balance of the new changes to the system but would also add to the reasoning behind why police are going on the store raid. So my idea is that when a money laundering transaction happens in a 24/7 that there is a chance that it gets noticed by the FEDS or FIB. The FIB would then broadcast to the local PD that there is a store selling illegal items or laundering money. Local PD would then have to go to the FIB and wait a certain amount of time (whatever is balanced 30-90 secs is my idea) to be handed a warrant for which particular store is doing the illegal activity. After obtaining this warrant then the PD would be able to do a raid on that particular store.   Just an idea of a way to add to the system that has nothing to do with increasing or decreasing the money. Shouldn't be about that anyways.

[Cleetus McSkeeter]

1 hour ago, Dorian_Fendrel said:

That sounds like a great investment! 96k to make 360k! Also, keep in mind, this system is designed to create more roleplay, not to allow players to make more money. A lot of players hyperfocus on money, money, money, but that is just a means. A tool you can use to create MORE roleplay. Don't ever make it your one and only goal my friend. I think the system is a great addition, it will cause a lot more interactions with Civs, as well as PD, and always with EMS. In time, the admin team will monitor how it happens, but the goal here isn't to allow more money to be moved, its to create more interactions, and it definitely succeeded in that.

That's understandable but making 360k in 6 hours with a 96k investment is horrible return, that is also assuming anyone is even able to come by your shop to rp with to begin with spending a full storm to RP as a shop keeper at that point seems like a chore if you have more than 100k dirty

[keebler_mfn_elf]

Why not make it a little like real life, but keep it to the business that you can launder money through. Any trans actions over $10,000 (per in game hour, "3 min") would cause the Bank to report your business to the PD that there is possible illegal money activities.  That would allow a business to launder $3,333r per min ($200,000 per hr) but also if they get greedy and buy too much stock, the bank will call the cops on them. I think if you made withdraws part of it though it would be too much though. 

 

There is a limit to how much money one can launder without drawing suspicion. According to the Bank Secrecy Act, banks must file a report any time someone deposits or withdraws more than $10,000 in cash.

 

[Thorgs]

4 hours ago, keebler_mfn_elf said:

Any trans actions over $10,000

Hmm, let's see I'll just list items for $9,999 as my loophole and criminals will figure to just buy 1 at a time. I don't know the exact balance here but you all have had it waaaay to easy for a long time and the timings at how it was washed also help to elude being caught.

[Porkinator]

I agree with Steve, the old system meant you guys never got caught. Since a new system has been implemented, it's allowed store raids to actually happen. I've had multiple raids now, each having a great RP scenario. Time for criminals to change up their tactics, and 360k per storm cycle is mooore than enough. 10k per minute just means more money hoarded. I will agree there should be another way to spend dirty money, giving more criminal RP. There shouldnt be people making a mill a day, its nonsense for the economy. As I always say role play over monopoly.

[Gasman]

Store raids are some of my favorite RP scenarios now on the PD side, especially if the owner or employees are there to play it out. But even their absence makes for some interesting scenarios, and of the two recent raids I've been party to recently it becomes more than just a "reverse robbery" situation.

But to the people that think the way PD is notified of the activity seems kinda hokey, you can play this mechanic off in different ways, rather than just saying "oh we got an anonymous tip for some suspicious transactions." I'll make up stuff that ranges from locals who thought they witnessed something shady (similar to how drug distribution is handled), to an IRS audit encouraging us to investigate, or a Maze bank officer reporting a suspicious pattern of deposits and withdrawals ("structuring"). Just gotta use your imagination!

I don't know that I agree with adding an extra step for PD to execute store raids. The only thing a civilian needs to initiate a store robbery is a cracking kit. It takes enough time as it is on a busy shift -- assuming you have a full roster -- to gather enough officers to safely conduct a raid if PD is faced with a sizeable group.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Gasman

[Cleetus McSkeeter]

7 hours ago, Thorgs said:

Hmm, let's see I'll just list items for $9,999 as my loophole and criminals will figure to just buy 1 at a time. I don't know the exact balance here but you all have had it waaaay to easy for a long time and the timings at how it was washed also help to elude being caught.

I completely agree that people will try to find a loophole, thats why my suggestion has changes for both PD and Civ, we bring back the old system of % of transactions get alerted to PD. Its not that I want PD to get less raids like it was before. Make it so we can clean the money faster and lower the chances of it going under the radar. the main concern is if you sell 200 coke it'll give you roughly 30-40k in dirty money. Thats an extra 40 min that you have to sit at a store to wash money you earned, not every criminal wants to do Store RP for every van of coke they manage to sell. 

[Cleetus McSkeeter]

4 hours ago, Jordan.S said:

I agree with Steve, the old system meant you guys never got caught. Since a new system has been implemented, it's allowed store raids to actually happen. I've had multiple raids now, each having a great RP scenario. Time for criminals to change up their tactics, and 360k per storm cycle is mooore than enough. 10k per minute just means more money hoarded. I will agree there should be another way to spend dirty money, giving more criminal RP. There shouldnt be people making a mill a day, its nonsense for the economy. As I always say role play over monopoly.

With my suggestions police raids would not stop at all, if anything they would slightly increase or stay the same, what would change is the rate at which dirty money does get washed, no one buys a store for 5k then washes only 50k in dirty. I have not met anyone that was making million a day off of dirty money, maybe did a million dollar cleaning because they act as a MafiaRP where lots of people did not want to deal with dirty money so they become associates with "corporations" aka criminal enterprises. They did not make that million dollars in that day, they bought dirty money from multiple people in exchange for clean so they can RP as the go to Mafia. This just incentives everyone to clean there own dirty instead of continuing our RP of acting as a mafia

[r3v0Lt55]

Quote

I have not met anyone that was making million a day off of dirty money

I've personally seen about half a dozen times with about 10 mins to go in the storm cycle people going million dollar plus cleanings and the sad thing is they were streaming it thinking that it was acceptable behavior. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that people weren't doing it.
 

Quote

Thats an extra 40 min that you have to sit at a store to wash money you earned, not every criminal wants to do Store RP for every van of coke they manage to sell. 

There is more than 1 way to skin a cat (I think thats the saying). There are people out there myself included that will clean other peoples dirty money for a cut. If you don't wanna sit in a store then don't. Step outside of your group and find the people that will clean the money for you.

Quote

I completely agree that people will try to find a loophole...

So your way at 10k per minute. I have my crew of 4 people and we rent out 24/7 strawberry. Then send 1 person to Sandy 24/7 to rob the store and get the police attention there.  We send another person to act as the lookout watching the police and phoning in information to the other 2 members at the 24/7 strawberry. Lets say that the robbery and the immediate scene take a total of 15 mins where the PD are focused there. You could make a total of 150k divided by 4 for 15 mins of time. At the cost of what 5k for store rental and 1 guys jail time and fines. Don't think there is any other job in the game where you can get that kind of money in 15 mins. So the loophole in your system would just be to power do it like that and if you owned all of the stores you could do it quite a few times a night.

There has to be some balance. But to be able to find said balance there needs to be data so that the numbers can be looked over and adjusted if need be. These changes have only been in a few days and I would say just  be patient and give admins time to go through the numbers and see if adjustments need to be made.

[keebler_mfn_elf]

Why do I even bother trying to have some things have better odds for a criminal to succeed. 

All i can say is that with this new system you are going to see less people wanting to do Coke or meth, because they are not going to get their full profit out of it, I know that, me as someone that used to clean money, im not going to with this new system, the risk is just not worth it.

And  also people can say all the time that you should value RP over  money, but 60% of Badlands is economy, things cost an unreal amount, including some fines. I do value RP, that is why I am on the EMS and try to get a few hrs of it every week.

If you ask any of my friends, they will confirm, I do not value much of the COP RP, because half the time cops just use power over RP. That is why I will never be found making or selling coke, meth, or weed. I dont agree with the RP that has been placed within the server. And now it seems that dirty money is going to be added to that list.

[Thorgs]

1 hour ago, keebler_mfn_elf said:

Why do I even bother trying to have some things have better odds for a criminal to succeed. 

I'm not knocking your feedback for a balance I'm just stating what will happen on the 10k idea as I said idk what the balance should be but I can tell you of first-hand knowledge how criminals wash money not to mention how many times criminals have gotten away from selling with no opposition. Sorry if you have a bad interaction with certain officers but this is a public server so you have to understand that on the flip side how many time have criminals gotten away with stuff only to get salty when they do eventually get caught. It's easy to judge from one side of it not knowing what officers have to deal with on a daily basis.

4 minutes ago, Morphiushell said:

Example of this: doing coke the place was packed a grp just finished and left they went and changed their clothes with one or two of them clocking in as cops. We left to go store our shit at the garage and 4 pulled us at gun point we flee in the car and see cops at the station pull up for help they refuse its too dangerous we try to flee get run of the road and get in a gun fight everyone dies except one of our guys he takes off. Cops and EMS get us all patched up we get jail and fined the other guys who held us up walk free.

Then you need to report this!! we can't watch everyone ALL the time if you feel you have been wronged in any way submit an IA on any faction or player report! for it to be investigated it's easy for you to come and complain but your not reporting it so efforts to help fix it. "Oh yeah why should I report it and nothing happens" It's been said more times than none but if any faction is not made aware how can it be fixed? You would be surprised what goes on behind the scenes when it brought to our Attention. Bottom line is no one is ever going to be happy on what decisions are made! And not everyone is going to be pleased on whatever outcome happens

[Thorgs]

Let me just say I have also done meth and weed back in the day so your preaching to a choir when you say this and say that.... I remember when you sold in One spot which if cops rolled up you were to a degree just caught but this server has come a looooong way on how criminals sell and make money. I mostly did meth and even back then you had to be smart to elude cops nothing different now but now you get to sell to locals and your range to sell is mostly city wide w/exception around legion square. Balance takes time nothing happens overnight like you make think and drugs have been tweaked over time again it also boils down to how can I get rich in 1 hour and that's, not the way it works.. Devs have put in a lot of time in trying to balance things out but when change happens and no time is given to see how it works out you get these post which I'm not discouraging but give some time for them to crunch the numbers and adjust from there. Like I stated previously washing was just a snap of a finger and now that there is change you don't like it.

[Coach]

=Just witnessed 3 raids on the same store within a 45 minute period. This system needs a lot of tweaks, including a cooldown.

[Cleetus McSkeeter]

2 hours ago, r3v0Lt55 said:

I've personally seen about half a dozen times with about 10 mins to go in the storm cycle people going million dollar plus cleanings and the sad thing is they were streaming it thinking that it was acceptable behavior. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that people weren't doing it.
 

There is more than 1 way to skin a cat (I think thats the saying). There are people out there myself included that will clean other peoples dirty money for a cut. If you don't wanna sit in a store then don't. Step outside of your group and find the people that will clean the money for you.

So your way at 10k per minute. I have my crew of 4 people and we rent out 24/7 strawberry. Then send 1 person to Sandy 24/7 to rob the store and get the police attention there.  We send another person to act as the lookout watching the police and phoning in information to the other 2 members at the 24/7 strawberry. Lets say that the robbery and the immediate scene take a total of 15 mins where the PD are focused there. You could make a total of 150k divided by 4 for 15 mins of time. At the cost of what 5k for store rental and 1 guys jail time and fines. Don't think there is any other job in the game where you can get that kind of money in 15 mins. So the loophole in your system would just be to power do it like that and if you owned all of the stores you could do it quite a few times a night.

There has to be some balance. But to be able to find said balance there needs to be data so that the numbers can be looked over and adjusted if need be. These changes have only been in a few days and I would say just  be patient and give admins time to go through the numbers and see if adjustments need to be made.

I completely agree with your statement now that you explained about someone doing a dirty money cleaning at the last 10 min of a storm, that needed to be addressed and I believe that this system change will address that.

 

Some people are saying that this is a way to make money fast, I totally disagree, this is our income we earned from selling coke/meth. This is like a small reward for us that have not been caught by the cops by either selling with a look-out (which I always do) or just being careful and not sticking to one spot, now there has always been a risk with cleaning dirty money but before it was ridiculously low risk, but now we have gone to the other extreme and its ridiculously high risk.

 

I do Criminal, EMS and Cop RP with EMS and criminal being the 2 primary RP's I do. I strongly believe that the system is great just needs better fine tuning of the numbers, mainly the rate of cleaning boosting from 1k to 10k. To balance the change of rate of cleaning and to help PD more, set a cap at what the max you can clean at once so there is a higher probability of them being called, which I suggested anything over 30k trying to be purchased with dirty money auto-notifies the PD. I just don't want to have to work a full storm RPing as a store clerk because I enjoy running from the cops when I am selling coke or making the coke. 

[Assassin330]

33 minutes ago, Thorgs said:

 Balance takes time nothing happens overnight like you make think and drugs have been tweaked over time again it also boils down to how can I get rich in 1 hour and that's, not the way it works.. 

Its true that balance takes time but that's what feedback is for and with enough people speaking up about it will hopefully push the issue a bit further to the top of the priority list.  I agree you shouldn't be able to clean money instantly and I feel like the way people were doing it before would be considered exploiting the system and there should be consequences for that.  I do not agree though with the getting rich within an hour though.  You have to remember, it took a lot more time than just an hour to get that dirty money.  You have to factor in all the rest of the risks of getting the cement, making the coke, and selling the coke to finally end up with a part of that profit.  If the "get rich quick" thing is the issue then things like scuba diving need to be looked at because that is by far the most profitable with least amount of risk.

Criminal activity is a decent part of doing things on this server and it brings a good amount of interactions depending on what you're doing. I feel though that the risk vs reward on a lot of the criminal activity is not balanced at all.  Things like store store robberies make great RP especially when using a 3rd party hostage etc. but the risk vs reward is so unbalanced that people don't really want to do it.  I love doing the store robbing stuff but when you get a payout of say 2,000$ (if you're lucky...I've seen getting only 700$ before) vs the 30-60k in fines if you get caught how is that even remotely worth it?  Yes its not all about the money but without any money there isn't a lot you can do on this server because of the way the economy is balanced and in order to get that money to do stuff is very much just a grind fest with little to no interaction.  So you have to grind to get money with no interaction so you can RP, just to lose it all to the cops if/when you get caught.

[Danielle Wright]

Can we talk about increasing the time between raids? I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but we were cleaning money at the Strawberry store and it got raided, we successfully defended it, and then less than 10 minutes later it was raided again with more cops that time, we were able to partially defend it again but got shot down. Then it was raided again and shut down. There needs to be some sort of cooldown timer on the raids, kinda like the robberies you know? 

[keebler_mfn_elf]

1 hour ago, Thorgs said:

 even back then you had to be smart to elude cops

That the problem you have no way laundering money, to allows you to elude cops, you sell something like a pizza at normal price it will notify the cops. making it so that you can not just turn on dirty money and allow dealers to slowly spend their dirty money. That is why the system is broken. 

[Serpico]

Just want to say that we are monitoring this post and will make any necessary changes if we see fit. At the time that we make changes, you will be updated. Please keep feedback and suggestions coming. 

[Cleetus McSkeeter]

Just now, Serpico said:

Just want to say that we are monitoring this post and will make any necessary changes if we see fit. At the time that we make changes, you will be updated. Please keep feedback and suggestions coming. 

Thanks for the reply Serpico and if you have any suggestions or want to mention anything on whats possible from a Devs perspective that would be appreciated!

[Caralanco]

100% agree with the last few comments. The system in its current state is just as unbalanced as it was before, now in favor of police.

Now this is my personal opinion but I believe the rate should be $2500/minute. Slow enough to enable RP, fast enough to be worth cleaning.
As a few other have pointed out already, the alert rate is ridiculous. As Jerome said, use an informant instead of alerts and as Izzy said, implement a cool down between raids, either fixed or SOP. (same as illegal checks?)

I enjoy some good RP but at the end of the day, we launder money to make money. It shouldn't be the sole focus however, its an important aspect. Money is a reflection of time, hard work and in some cases creativity and entrepreneurship. There is a certain prestige to being rich for that reason. Working for weeks to buy a super car is more rewarding than spawning one in and simply pretending you're rich. (In my opinion) There just needs to be a healthy balance of RP and grinding, If you're underwater for a whole storm cycle there is definitely something wrong.

Just my 2 cents.