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The big bad govt can't let this happen, they send faux lovers to entice the couple - one falls for it and starts having an illicit affair enhanced with expensive drugs. Probably the woman. She then starts divulging inside information leading to the takedown of the newly formed empire The occupiers stage an uprising who will prevail - what will happen next??? Go-----

I thought of a little more because my comment above is kind of bogus actually. So... The govt doesn't know the money is ill gotten. They just see the couple and their movement as a threat to their entire structure. The govt wins the dust up and gains control of the money Meanwhile the big bad bank is feverishly working to find the missing money, and discovers the govt is in possesion of the stolen money. The bank doesn't wan't the money back this is the best investment they could ever have made. The bankers now have the entire govt by the balls, they hold them hostage and use this as a way to blackmail the govt into allowing them to do whatever they want The bank now owns everyones money and rules the country OK , time for more coffee

This is my big blind spot, whenever I watch crime shows or movies (most recently "Breaking Bad" and "Wolf Of Wall Street") I can never wrap my head around how the money laundering works, I keep feeling like there's one piece missing so that folks at home can't do it themselves (seems reasonable). And the folks in these movies kept getting caught BECAUSE of the laundering, so maybe they don't have a handle on it either. So my thought is that if they know they're going to get caught using the money, and that anything they buy with the money will be forfeit, maybe their instinct is to cast as wide a net as possible, not just paying off their own crippling debt but paying off the debt of as many people in the town as possible: they go too big to fail. The authorities might have no problem locking up one couple, but an entire neighbourhood of people? A little community? Forget it. And the couple could argue that the bank is getting their money back anyway since that's where all the payments go, they're just going through an intermediary. Perhaps they try to give the money back honestly at first, KNOWING they're going to get into trouble if they let it sit, but they can't. They can't give it back the right way, so they give it back the wrong way, and help as many people on the way as they can. This sort of goes with my instinct for day one, the stripper hostage story, where my criminals seem to be savvy enough to know you have to win the battle of public opinion, and you want to be the ones leading the narrative.

I'll post more later, but just a couple of words for now: Cayman Islands. Switzerland. Bitcoin.

Now, I definitely get how that keeps it out of the hands of people counting and taxing, but then it's stuck there... you really can't use any meaningful amount of it without raising a red flag, and it's usually so much more than people could use in a lifetime, that the "loot" becomes a liability (look at Walter White). Money in a vault is useless, it's just paper, it doesn't become power until it's in play and the loot is too dangerous to put in the game.

So, 222 million, right? Let's clean 'em up. Sisters (as in nuns) Anne and Linda of the Chandler Christian orphanage, which is in deep trouble. Their grant was swept away by Mernie Badoff, a hedge fund manager that really was a pyramid scheme. They tried to raise money but all their efforts weren't successful. They need $200,000 to keep the orphanage running this year and to pay some debt. They go to their last resort: Steve Lee, a loan shark - they a re really desperate, and this guy wants the valuable property where the orphanage is built. They accept Lee's offer, he says he'll wire the money The sisters check their balance... WOAH... $222,222,222.222 ??? Mr. Lee must have made a mistake, we can't keep this much. They call him, he hasn't made the transfer but before he can tell them he realizes he could take advantage and convinces them to transfer him the $222,0222,222. And they do. Monday morning the bank calls demanding all the money, the sisters learn about the mistake, tell what happened but the bank doesn't believe them. They go to search Mr. Lee and well, he's gone. The police are waiting for them at the orphanage, so they run away. In a desperate attempt to clear their names they go to the only person they think could help them - Mernie Badoff, who is in a low security prison that is really more like a spa. He agrees to help them, but of course, he may be trying to go after the millions, not help the sisters. Mernie tracks the money, uses his secret stash of money to go to the Cayman Islands, then Switzerland. Mr. Lee is trying to cover the money trail. But Mernie is an expert, he knows all the tricks and has the contacts. The feds and Interpol are after them. During their road trip Mernie gets to know the sisters and the orphanage, the kids (through photos). It's the first time he sees his victims as humans. They follow the trail to Russia, where all they money has been turned into Bitcoin and once it's transferred any trace will be lost. The Interpol arrests the sisters. Mernie escapes and goes after Mr. Lee, gets the passwords - he has the chance to go underground with all those undetectable millions. But he has changed - he thinks about the sisters, the orphans, the people he scammed. And he wires the money back to the sisters, even adding a couple of grands from his secret accounts to cover a couple of grands that were used. Now this is a big story for the media. People learn about the orphanage and donations start to pour in - the orphanage is saved. Mr. Lee is in a lot of trouble with the Russian mafia. Mernie goes back to serve his time and collaborate with the Fed's Financial Crime Unit.