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The language of a money laundering forum

Language Log 2025-09-10

"Linguistic Mechanisms of Knowledge-Exchange in a Dark-Web Money Laundering Forum." Chiang, Emily. PLOS ONE 20, no. 8 (August 5, 2025): e0329777

 

Abstract

Money laundering facilitates serious crime, enables the expansion of criminal operations, and destabilises economies. Extant scholarship is largely concerned with anti-money laundering approaches, with far less attention being paid to the language and behaviours of the individuals who engage in money laundering. ‘Dark-web’ discussion fora are prime loci for illicit knowledge exchange and key enablers of money laundering, yet, are underexplored as sites for understanding the online activities and behaviours of users. 

This paper reports on a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of one such forum, guided by research questions around the key topics and common linguistic strategies by which knowledge is exchanged within a large community of individuals interested in money laundering, and the ways in which this community serves its members. The analysis identifies the forum as an extremely efficient and productive site for knowledge-exchange and thus ‘criminal upskilling’, which is attributed to three core characteristics: a strict adherence to community rules, a highly knowledgeable user base, and a culture of friendliness and reciprocity.

Conclusion

This work has identified common topics and discursive practices associated with knowledge exchange in a dark-web forum focused on money laundering. In doing so, it contributes an empirically based linguistic perspective to the limited work addressing the social and behavioural aspects of money laundering. As a community of practice, /d/Laundromat has been shown to offer its users learning support across a diverse range of ML-related issues for users of varied levels of domain-specific competence. The three key aspects characterising this community – a strict adherence to forum rules, a highly knowledgeable user base, and a culture of friendliness and openness – each contribute to its success as an effective and productive platform for knowledge-exchange, unclouded by promotional posts and less impacted by the socially oriented discourse and moral concerns that often pervade other types of deviant online fora. Importantly, these characteristics make/d/Laundromat a socially safe space for newcomers to begin learning the fundamentals of money laundering, and a fruitful site for the continued development of that knowledge and expertise over time. In this way, the discourse of the/d/Laundromat community provides an illustrative example of how dark-web knowledge-exchange platforms can become key facilitators of criminal upskilling and enablers of continued criminal activity. Future work examining several ML-focused online spaces could offer comparisons between groups, providing a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of offending and behaviour around money laundering.

Probably more than any other linguistics project that I have encountered, it is difficult for me to wrap my head around the rational / purpose / aim / goal for this research.

 

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