I see that the prepaid accounts for cellular and game access can be sanitized. I expect at least one shady MVNO to offer prepaid SIM cards that can be recharged with BTC as that's a very easy way to move cash across national borders; and I expect that telco's are treated with pretty much the same laissez faire attitude as HSBC was with respect to money laundering.
Every time I've gotten a prepaid card, I've had to show identification (usually a passport outside the US). From what I recall the ostensible reason for this is to track people who might use a cell phone as a remote bomb trigger. Nevertheless, if there is an ID associated with each prepaid SIM, I'd think that would be the hook that could be used to penetrate a money-laundering scheme. Am I missing something?
It's not the end-user who's likely to be doing money laundering, although that might happen any how.
Here's a sketch of how it might work, an entity with a large amount of USD in bank accounts in the US, that wishes to move the money elsewhere without triggering SARs pays USD for prepaid wireless service which they use to provision prepaid wireless cards, which loudly advertise that they can be funded using BTC. Millions of people who are locked out of the "real" economy in one way or another start using BTC to buy wireless minutes, or electricity, or nights in capsule motels; whatever fungible commodity the prepaid service provider can get a good deal on. Those BTC are perhaps transferred back into TND, ISK, CHF or some other local currency, or kept as an offshore BTC fund.
Connoisseurs of global financial crime will recognize that this is basically a souped up internet speed version of the Peso Exchange that doesn't rely on shipping goods to overseas locations.
Now if a player with enough legitimate cover were to run this playbook, they could do it as a branded card and basically own the public perception of prepaid card good for all kinds of things that can get paid for by the internet...
Not to say that there aren't issues with this model, and this is not a game one could get into with less than 30 Million USD in liquid assets. But there are a surprisingly large number of organisations that could field both the front businesses and the free cash flow to run this. And a slightly smaller number that could do it in a way that wouldn't wind up with their executive team on the Interpol watchlists.
