[polonbike]

Did the serie Breaking Bad inspire a trend, showing a seemingly innocent/efficient way to clean money ?

[Telemakhos]

On the contrary, the TV show was inspired by car washes used as drug fronts—not so much money laundering as selling drugs. Cash changes hands, and the attendant gives you a wipe for your dash, but he could just as easily hand you a bag of coke if you'd given him the right amount of cash.

[Plasmoid]

From what I've heard the current way to clean cash is to buy gift cards and then use them to buy items from Amazon/Steam. Sure, the store fronts take a cut but having a 1099 from Valve looks way more legitimate than reporting thousands of dollars of cash.

[notdang]

So how do you clean them with this scheme? By registering a game on Steam or selling something on Amazon?

Also made me think why in the country I live, in stores like 7Eleven you cannot pay with a credit card for gift cards, google pay cards, etc.

[diggan]

Unlikely, the meme of using car washing places for washing money has been around for longer than the tv show.

[dilyevsky]

The show was written in eary 2000s - I seriously doubt many people pay cash anymore

[mewpmewp2]

But people don't have to pay cash, the "pretend people" pay cash.

[mmh0000]

John Mulaney | Venmo Is For Drug Deals[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBpDvCu8yYI

[andix]

I don't think a car wash is a very good place to wash money, but it's a great joke for a tv show.

[phillc73]

Interesting observation. I do use a car wash, not frequently enough as my car is more often dirty than clean, but I have only ever paid cash! For context, I currently live in Austria.

[jjulius]

Late 2000s and early 2010s*.

[tekla]

Wow. The Term has been in use since the early 1900's