August 25 2017
The Treasury Department said that 30 percent of high-end real-estate deals that were subject under a new watchdog program involved “suspicious activity” and potential money-laundering.
Treasury this week expanded and extended a program targeting luxury real estate deals in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and other big markets to prevent the use of real estate for money-laundering by overseas buyers. The program was designed to prevent buyers from using shell company’s or LLC’s to hide the identities of the real buyers.The way the program works is that title insurance companies are required to determine the true owners of LLC’s or shell companies doing all-cash deals to buy real estate above a certain price in New York City, Miami, Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, San Diego, San Francisco, San Diego and the Bay Area, as well as Bexar county in Texas. Treasury then determines whether those beneficial owners are on its lists of suspicious activity — or people who have been flagged for potential money laundering, corruption or other financial crimes.