04/21/2009

Posted by Durga Devi Nehru

Domain Tip – Money laundering:
Money laundering, at its simplest, is the act of making money that comes from Source A look like it comes from Source B. In practice, criminals are trying to disguise the origins of money obtained through illegal activities so it looks like it was obtained from legal sources. Otherwise, they can’t use the money because it would connect them to the criminal activity, and law-enforcement officials would seize it.

The basic money laundering process has three steps:

Placement – At this stage, the launderer inserts the dirty money into a legitimate financial institution. This is often in the form of cash bank deposits. This is the riskiest stage of the laundering process because large amounts of cash are pretty conspicuous, and banks are required to report high-value transactions.

Layering – Layering involves sending the money through various financial transactions to change its form and make it difficult to follow. Layering may consist of several bank-to-bank transfers, wire transfers between different accounts in different names in different countries, making deposits and withdrawals to continually vary the amount of money in the accounts, changing the money’s currency, and purchasing high-value items (boats, houses, cars, diamonds) to change the form of the money. This is the most complex step in any laundering scheme, and it’s all about making the original dirty money as hard to trace as possible.

Integration – At the integration stage, the money re-enters the mainstream economy in legitimate-looking form — it appears to come from a legal transaction. This may involve a final bank transfer into the account of a local business in which the launderer is “investing” in exchange for a cut of the profits, the sale of a yacht bought during the layering stage or the purchase of a $10 million screwdriver from a company owned by the launderer. At this point, the criminal can use the money without getting caught. It’s very difficult to catch a launderer during the integration stage if there is no documentation during the previous stages.

Technical Tip – JCL

To specify dummy VSAM dataset in a JCL

Code AMP=’AMORG’ . This parameter tells the OS to treat the file as VSAM file.
//NOVSAMIO DD DUMMY,AMP=’AMORG’

SORT

To prevent the job from abending when the VSAM is empty ,
Pass the parameter, VSAMEMT=YES for the SORT utility.

i.e,
//STEP3 EXEC PGM=SORT,PARM=’VSAMEMT=YES’
//*
//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=*
//SORTIN DD DSN=VSAM.DSN
// DISP=SHR
//SORTOUT DD DSN=FLATFILE.DSN
// DISP=SHR
//SYSIN DD *
SORT FIELDS=COPY
/*

Interesting Facts about JP Morgan:
John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), the most powerful American banker of his time, helped build a credit bridge between Europe and America and financially rescued the United States government twice.
In 1901, he formed the United States Steel Corporation, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.

Quotes of the day:
Courage is saying, “Maybe what I’m doing isn’t working; maybe I should try something else.”
Dont be afraid of pressure. pressure is what turns a lump of coal into a diamond!

Interesting Facts:
Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right, but women’s shirts have the buttons on the left…
Guinness Book Of Records holds the record for being the book most stolen from Public Libraries.

Joke of the day:
The most dangerous position in which to sleep is with your feet on your office desk