check? EFT? ACH? bank transfer? depends on the amount. When you are dealing with that much money, Step 1: Accountant, Step 2: Attorney. You will be paying taxes, it is their job to minimize it. It is not your job to worry about it. If you are worrying about it, You. Are. Doing. It. Wrong.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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Send me it as a pallet of copper bricks and I'll work out the rest.
OP, if this is anything more than "hypothetically", you are absolutely definitely being scammed right now. Break off chat with the "billionaire". If you've given them your financial details, call the phone number printed on the back of your bank card. If you use Windows or MacOS, run a scan with Seraph Secure to make sure nobody has remote access to your computer.
That said: billionaires deal with banks and financial institutions of all kinds all the time. They'll have their bank communicate directly with your bank before making a bank transfer, so both banks know exactly what's happening. You may need to pay tax on the donation/investment. Use some of the money to hire an accountant.
They just make a bank transfer. The real issue is the taxation.
Every country has a threshold for how much someone can receive without paying taxes.
Using legit regular banks would be your best bet to avoid scams or being accused of fiscal crimes.
It depends on where the billionaire's and your bank account are located (some restrictions may apply), but a normal bank transfer works perfectly for any amount. Of course for large amounts it's better to contact the banks first because it may reject a large deposit if it comes out of the blue.
For donations there will be taxes and some bureaucracy, the anti money laundering will be triggered, but it's nothing impossible to handle.
They don't, they want to help themselves. If you happen to benefit as well, it's basically a rounding error on their part, which they'll be sure to minimize in the future.
If my nigerian princes have taught me anything is that these kind of things are always best done by western union.
Mark the email as spam and move on.
If they really wanted to help, I would not be the person to come to.
It's a scam. Do not engage. If a billionaire really wanted to send you money, they can pay for the lawyers and accountants to make sure it is all above board. Maybe they make a foundation and give you a cushy job there. That's how actual billionaires do it. What you do with after is up to you (and your countries' tax authorities, no doubt.)
Ironically, if it weren't a scam, then crypto can be the safest way to receive any funds. If you securely generated your own crypto wallet, and sent him an address on a reputable blockchain to send funds to, and he actually sent them, then the money is yours, forever, no backsies.
Of course, that's not how crypto scams work, either. They always guide you to use a wallet that they control (and can drain funds out of easily), or tell you to send crypto to them first to unlock something.
It's a scam at best. At worst you find yourself being part of a death game, thinking you can win all the money by killing all of the other players - only to get executed in the end anyway.
They would have their people set up a trust fund for you, or they would have their people transfer the money to you.
This is not a problem you need to consider in this situation
Any billionaire that wants to donate money to a cause won't be giving it to an individual. Only an organization that can give them a tax receipt.
Unless he's standing at your door with a big bag of clean dollar bills, ignore it.
If they are willing to invest millions in me, they can fly their ass over to me and deliver it themselves.
I'd also be willing to fly out to them if theyd rather just buy me the plane ticket.
Hypothetically: Banks don't generally scrutinize the source of the money or why it's being transferred. If the funds exist in the account, they just make the transaction. Also it's on the gift giver to pay any applicable taxes.
In real life: Scammers posing as a billionaire are infinitely more likely to contact you than a real one. The scammers will depend on you thinking a normal bank transaction won't work so you can jump through some hoops that will inevitably have you paying them real money instead.
There is a law called Know Your Customer. You have the generally backwards
In the USA banks most definitely scrutinize the source of money and why it's being transferred.
Emphasis on "generally" in my statement. Of course there are exceptions where they would, but if I had a multi-million dollar check from Warren Buffett for replacing a few light bulbs in his house, the bank isn't going to call him and make sure that's a reasonable price or anything.
Banks can and do get into hot water if they're found to have handled -- inadvertently or not -- funds which ends up with banned entities, like DPRK or terrorist groups, or are the product of fraud AND that they ignored reasonable suspicions.
The classic example is the so-called "703 account" of fraudster Bernie Madoff, held at JP Morgan Chase bank. Although a humble checking account, it saw huge money inflows and outflows, with one reference showing a single withdrawal of $1.3 billion. For their wilful disregard of the obvious red flags, the bank was fined $461 million of their own money, separate from the seizure of the account to pay the victims.
And perfectly normal people have had their accounts "closed due to fraud", meaning the bank got suspicious and decided to unilaterally close the account, just in case. They do give the balance back to the owners, since it's to avoid an ongoing fraud. It's still annoying though, but banks won't carry more liability than they're comfortable with, at least when the regulators still bared their teeth from time to time.
Those are all extreme cases unlikely to be relevant to OP's question.
The general rule is anything over 10,000 gets flagged and investigated if there's additional suspicious activity. Same as when there are multiple deposits just under 10,000
if there's additional suspicious activity
Emphasis on this part. Either way, what you're describing is generally for tax purposes. Going back to the original question of the thread, if I had billions of dollars and wrote a stranger a check, the bank is highly unlikely to make sure I meant it. At most they may report it to the government to make sure I pay gift taxes (which are paid by the giver, not the recipient, and even they apply far above $10,000 but you still need to report it at that level)
The receiver pays taxes over a given tax years allowance in addition to the tax paid by the giver.
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in the USA are made to track both potential tax evasion and money laundering. This is where the $10k cash "limit" comes from, but SARs can/should be filed for higher amount that create suspicion.
Someone depositing a check for multiple times their lifetime transactions total would absolutely create suspicion on themselves, especially if it was a personal check. But if it were a business check from "ABC Mortgage Escrow", that's probably legit but a bank clerk is well within their rights to flag it. Flagging just means the money laundering team would investigate the source, determine that it doesn't have other red flags, and quietly move on.
Flagging just means the money laundering team would investigate the source, determine that it doesn't have other red flags, and quietly move on.
Exactly. Staying with OP's hypothetical situation, potential investigation on its own does not mean it can't happen. It just means there may be an extra step behind the scenes, very possibly without either party's knowledge anything even happened. More importantly, if the benefactor insists on some dodgy payment method that's an even clearer sign of BS because a normal bank doesn't give as much of a shit as OP lets on
Don't give the Nigerian prince your account details!
The bank wont do shit. They dont scrutinize shit. This is also already a common scam and the bank won't protect you.
The funny thing is I genuinely asked this question spontaneously I forgot that is an actual excuse scammers use and some people believe it
If billionaires actually wanted to help people, they wouldn't be billionaires.
Tell them you want a meeting in person to discuss exactly what the investment plan is and what they envision coming from it. If they really wanted to invest "millions" then they won't mind meeting in person
What if I spontaneously sprouted wings and flew? It's about as likely.
You don’t get to be a billionaire by being nice. They will wring every last bit of value out of you.
They will only do this in context of a company. Get a lawyer to setup a llc. They do sometimes give money this way - see angel investors, but you need a company for legal reasons.
They don't.
Start a foundation, advertise that they are passionate about cause, reach out to you to arrange an in person meeting with you or your legal representative, write a check.
But also, it’s not a donation. You are not a 501c or a 527. There is a maximum gift allowance that is tax free in the US. You have to pay taxes on top of that amount.
You should go through your bank because your bank knows the relevant tax laws and theoretically is capable and willing of countering money laundering
The day a camel walked through a needle's loop.
First world problems
Just do an airdrop. Bag of cash on my porch is fine.