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Comment by otterley

3 years ago

The FBI has a bullet point "Silent Second" on their page about mortgage fraud, so people have borrowed money for their down payments in the past and been prosecuted for it. That's not a new idea.

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime/mortgage-...

For the income taxes, my first thought would be "sell an NFT for $200k to a friend", now it's a gain on sale of property that can be offset by buying real estate in an "opportunity zone". Later, your friend can even claim a tax deduction when it gets "stolen".

He's self-employed with a business. So $200k in annual sales to his friend, and then he purchases $200k of equipment depreciated over 5 years from the same friend but split among 12 different shell companies so it's not obvious. He does pay taxes the first year, but gets it back over the next 4 years.

That page mentions leasing from the owner at inflated rates, and then getting it appraised at a multiple of the profit. It's not a direct example, but does use inflated income transferred between friends. They probably wouldn't mind paying taxes on the lease income during that time, since the multiple is often 20x.