Making bad movies as money laundering scheme? There is this youtube channel called I Hate Everything in which, among other things, this youtuber reviews Imdb's 100 lowest ranked movies in search for the worst movie: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxOKy-G3phBomkGrPJuQwUawQmS_1ysNN In one of such movie reviwes he points out that the budget was way too much for a movie that basically looked like it was recorded with an average hand-held camera, terrible actors and no movie sets whatsoever (one part of the movie was apparently recorded with an hidden camera at a real hospital with real, seemigly oblivious people instead of a movie set and extras). This youtuber comments that it seems unlikely that such a terrible and lazy movie could have had such a big budget, and that it seemed like some sort of money laundering scheme (this company has more movies of similar "quality"). My question is, how does someone exactly launder money by making terrible movies and lying about the budget?
Suppose you want to pay for your son's college tuition with cocaine sales proceeds. You hire your son as an actor in your miserable movie and pay him $90,000 for doing so. The movie is produced by a corporation that you don't have to 1099 when you give it money. The corporation treats the money in as a loan which isn't income to it and doesn't have to report the lender to anyone. The son has the money (after paying income tax on it) and can pay for college for the year. The movie company and son don't appear to be doing anything other than being incompetent movie producers and lousy overpaid actors unless you know the big picture. The money has effectively been spent in a way that conceals its illegal origins and makes it look legitimate. Ergo, money laundering.
The reason this section exists is pretty well stated in an English case: Holmes v. Governor of Brixton Prison and Another. In paragraph 12, they discuss the law of theft in England, and note that under the law there as it stood in 2004 (and reaching back to principles of common law, which are often but not always shared with the US), deception required causing someone to believe something. A machine has no mind, cannot think, and can't be made to believe anything -- it sees an input and mechanically performs some response in response to that input. For instance, suppose you were to discover someone's bank account number and printed a check of your own that had that number on it. You then make that check up to look like it's a check from the someone else to you, and deposit it to an ATM; you then withdraw however much is available immediately. In all likelihood, no human will see that check until the victim looks into why they're significantly poorer than they remembered, so no human was deceived. The only things that were possibly deceived were the computers involved in the check-clearing process. But they don't have a mind: as far as they're concerned, they see pixels, pass them through an algorithm, and then send a message to another computer at the bank with certain information (which a human recognizes as an image of a check and an amount of money, but an ATM doesn't know what it means for something to be an image of a check). The machine then mechanically pushes bills out a slot. They don't think the check's real, don't think it's fake, and don't think it's a check: they're just piles of semiconductors and wires acting in accordance with the laws of physics. If you gave a check like this to a check-cashing place, it's clearly theft by deception: you make the human there (falsely) think you have a legitimate check, and they then pay you money based on it. But these days, a lot of this stuff is automated. Alaska's legislature didn't want you to get out of theft by deception charged because something was automated. So, they said that a machine could be deceived. This isn't a crime by itself; you can't be charged with deceiving a machine. You are charged with an offense under the chapter that involves deception. What 11.46.985 does is say you can't argue "this wasn't deception because only the machine was deceived."
Expunction may be possible for instance if you are acquitted, later proven innocent, pardoned, and various other things that fall short of being convicted and doing the time. The entire law is here (Texas code of criminal procedure 55.01). There is also the option of an order of non-disclosure, overviewed here. A requirement for such an order is that you were placed on and completed deferred adjudication community supervision, which from what I can tell is not what happened. "Background check removal" may range between simply taking your money and doing nothing, to doing what you could do yourself to get free of traces via radaris, intelius, spokeo, and so on to "request removal" from that web site. This will not make your record unavailable, because these websites don't have any special powers to reach into and manipulate state records.
Given that both parties have committed criminal offenses (the 'bad actor' is attempting fraud and the 'victim' has committed unauthorized access to a computer system), no court would hear a civil case between these parties. As a matter of public policy, criminals do not owe a duty of care to each other so no one can win this case.
In this instance, the police were almost certainly trying to get you to volunteer to be in a line-up with the victim of the crime picking out potential suspects (of which you were absolutely one, and probably remain so). Assuming the chap or chappete who got mugged, who basically only saw the barrel of the gun, picked you out of the lineup at random, you could have expected to be carted off to a holding cell pending an interview, followed by arrest and very likely conviction for armed robbery. You were wise to refuse. You should never cooperate with the police even if you think have an amazing alibi that means that you couldn't have committed the crime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
I can't comment on what the legal situation would be in your home country, but as a matter of U.S. law, the hypothetical scenario you've described is not illegal. First, because you aren't a U.S. citizen and because you aren't operating in the United States, the U.S. government probably has no jurisdiction over you, your website, or your conduct. Even if it did, the most relevant statute, 18 U.S. Code § 1017, would not apply. The statute prohibits the &quot;fraudulent or wrongful&quot; use of the FBI's seal. But &quot;fraudulent&quot; and &quot;wrongful&quot; generally refer only to conduct where one uses deception or other means to obtain money, property, etc. to which they have no lawful entitlement. United States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396, 399 (1973). Because you aren't using the seal to obtain anyone's property through deception, this use would not fall within the statute's proscriptions. Even if the government sought to prosecute you, you would have a valid First Amendment defense. The First Amendment protects the right to free speech, and it does not allow statements to be criminalized merely because they are false. United States v. Alvarez, 132 S. Ct. 2537 (2012). This outcome should be unsurprising to most U.S. observers. I think most people would agree that the U.S. obviously cannot prosecute a Hollywood producer for making a movie dramatizing the FBI's efforts to shut down the Pirate Bay, even if it displayed the FBI's seizure message on a monitor in the course of the movie, and even if it showed the seal being used on a completely fictional website. The hypothetical you're describing is not materially different. In both cases, the seal is being used to falsely create the impression -- for entertainment purposes -- that the FBI has shut down a website. Saying false things for entertainment purposes is not a crime in the United States.
Presumably you consented to have an x-ray. It is a reasonable assumption that it was not your intention to simply be given the films without interpretation by a radiologist. If that was your intention then the obligation would be on you to make that clear since it is so far from ordinary practice that no reasonable person could know that. To use your analogy it would be like you asking to have your window washed but not wanting to have the soapy water rinsed off afterwards (assuming these were separately billable services). Further, rights and obligations under contracts are transferable by default. So it is perfectly legitimate for the lab to outsource the radiography without having to ask you.
Sounds a lot like a bad-luck, move-on situation. I can't imagine any reason why the complex would have any duty to watch your bike for you or otherwise ensure that no one steals it. The fact that you bought it knowing that the bike shed had not yet been built and that the security gates were broken would probably count against you. If you know who stole your bike, you'd have a much better case against them, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. If you're looking for a typical contingency-fee arrangement, in which the attorney takes a fee from your winnings, I'd imagine you're going to be especially out of luck, based on two hard facts: The total damages you can collect is probably going to be equal to the price of your bicycle: £400. The average hourly rate at national firms for the most junior lawyer is already more than £200. If you sat down with such a lawyer, explained your situation, discussed your options, and then tasked the lawyer to write a threatening letter to the apartment complex, you'd already have incurred more fees than the value of the bicycle. Probably no attorney is interested in that arrangement -- especially since it's highly unlikely the complex would pay. So unless you're actually willing to pay hourly rates, I can't imagine any lawyer taking this case. Even if you were, no one may take it just because lawyers don't like taking cases that they're going to lose.