Gamekeeper turned poacher

Last week my husband and I were on one of those long car journeys when you discuss all sorts of crazy things just to keep the boredom at bay.  We were talking about careers and whether we would choose the same ones again, and he asked me, “Do you think you would make a good money launderer?”.  Resisting the temptation to answer, “Only if you buy the wool”, I had a think about it.

I’m certainly good at the theory of money laundering – I doubt even professional launderers read as widely as I do about money laundering trends and techniques.  I know which institutions and jurisdictions take AML seriously, and which pay it lip service only, and which couldn’t care less.  And I might well escape detection for a while, as the idea of the woman who has vented her AML spleen in a blog called “ihatemoneylaundering” for six years turning into a launderer (or perhaps continuing all of that AML stuff as a fiendish disguise…) might not even occur to investigators.

But we came to the conclusion that I would betray myself.  I do not have a poker face, and am only a fair to middling liar.  The real giveaway, however, would probably be my inability to hold back from chastising (for which, read “throttling”) the people who would help me with my laundering.  The incompetent and the ignorant, I might just about tolerate.  But the complicit and the cunning, the scheming and the slippery – well, I’d just have to run them through with their own Montblanc fountain pens.