Son is 18. That’s about $43.5k USD. For reference, I earn ~9000 lei per month, and that’s considered a very good salary here. There are still people working for ~2500 lei a month. Son forgot to close this Revolut tab on the living room PC, that’s how I came across it.
Did looking at the transactions gave you an idea about the source?
The big transfers come from someone with a Chinese name and they’re in yuan, it says the name + “plata catre alta banca” (payment to another bank) - + $ (whatever money’s being sent). Wife says considering that she thinks it’s a boyfriend, cause only to a lover you’d send so much money regularly. The rest of the transactions are just normal spending (online, restaurants, shopping, etc).
There are several possibilities unrelated to lovers. As others have mentioned, cryptocurrency is likely. Selling drugs is also possible. Organized crime in China is very real so it could be other things besides drugs.
It could also be a relatively legitimate side-hustle. Art, music, or video production could yield this kind of money for a big project, especially over time.
If they’re not paying taxes, this is a problem no matter what. That is too much money for the banks to not take notice and report on it. This needs to be addressed either way.
How much are “big transactions”? That will help us understand what kind of payments are being received.
20k - 30k yuan every week or so. Someone mentioned a scam where you get money, send it to another account and keep a %, but the money here are not sent to another account. They’re spent normally.
Possibly money mule. Could be holding it for a time then will transfer it out later. Your child’s percent could be taken then.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-ordinary-people-get-duped-into-becoming-money-mules/
Yikes. That’s a LOT of money to be received ~weekly from an international source.
That means this has been going on for 2-4 months
This amount of money is likely to be reported to tax authorities if it hasn’t been already.
Is your son a talented artist of some kind? Musician? Video editor? Anything that might get them a contract job online that could be billed in different amounts each week? (A typical job would pay the same amount every week, whereas if they’re billing for “hours worked” it will be different each time)
I’m trying to be as generous as possible with explanations but I think you are right to be concerned (unless your son has a reason he would hide money from you, like a history of having his possessions disrespected or taken from him)
The only talents my son has are his looks and personality. Which makes me inclined to believe my wife’s sugar baby theory. Either way guess we won’t know until we ask him.
It is possible that the sender made a misstake and sent the money to the wrong account, but this needs to be dealt with.
If the banks in Romania are anything like the banks in Sweden, they will report this to the tax office.
Yeah that’s disturbing