I’d assume tax fraud is much more common than money laundering. Maybe drug dealers and the like create enough of a market for “reverse zappers” to exist; not sure.
This is anecdotal but when I was involved with an "Ultra Lounge" (upscale club) the owner had, on several occasions, individuals approach him wanting to buy a % of the club with cold hard cash.
I was there for one instance, 2 guys had asked him for a meeting to get some advice on opening a pizza place or something and wanted the input of a non-competing experienced business owner in the area so he agreed to meet with them and I was there so I sat in just to see if I could learn anything from the exchange. Like we're in some cheesy movie, these guys make small talk before one sets a briefcase on the table and opens it to reveal gobs of what appeared to be 10s and 20s and proceeded to tell him they actually wanted to buy a percentage of the club cash and he shut them right down and asked them to leave. After they left he told me he was approached multiple times in the first couple years of business with such offers. People wanting to dump a bunch of cash in his lap that, presumably, he would then trickle into the coffers via fictional sales as a way for them to launder some money via their cash infusion and potentially get far more back if the club remained successful. At the time I legitimately thought they were friends of his and he was pranking me or something, it was so absurd. I came to realize though that those selling drugs definitely love clubs as we'd have kids in their early 20s coming in 1-2 times a week and buying bottle service at 300$+ a bottle to impress friends/girls week after week with no realistic way of having that much disposable income.
This guy was super shady in general, and his shadiness is why we ultimately parted ways, but even that was too much for him.
It would not surprise me in the least if there was a market for this for bars and clubs that had "creative" income streams on the side. He would regularly have the bartenders pour house shots (An "IV" of OJ/shot of soda water/cheapest well vodka) for free for a group of people to get them to stay (often it was bridal parties) to make the club appear busy and doing stuff like that would certainly be a way to legitimately burn through some cheap liquor that you could ring up as premium-priced cocktails. I could see restaraunts that do free refills on drinks also being able to do this by ringing up some extra drink/burger/fries sales and fudging the numbers several percent, if not ten percent, to similarly sneak illicit money in.
