Comment by Spooky23
That’s internet lore. Nobody is buying a $50,000 rug with cash. If any of the people were, the rug guy wouldn’t have a place to bank. Reality is you can move a few rugs a month and make ok money.
There’s a market for these types of businesses. In my area there’s a dude with a company that sells and maintains $50-150k+ Christmas light and decoration displays. He has ~100 customers. The men’s clothing place I go to is a group of guys hanging out having a good time - it doesn’t look busy, but their 4-5 customers a day are dropping $3-10k/visit.
Stores like that are “laundering” money like the rest of the commercial real estate world… by playing games with various (legal) tax schemes. They are no more illegal than a Hampton Inn or AirBnb guy.
Real money laundering places are restaurant/bar, laundromats, arcades, and low income residential.
Tax schemes are there to save taxes using legalism loopholes, these places are happy to pay the taxes on "cash" purchases to bank the proceeds. Nobody is buying 50K rugs is correct, most of the transactions are self reported for the purpose of paying taxes and depositing funds. IRS and fincen are not in it together, in fact IRS encourages people to pay taxes on ill gotten gains.