This still seems to be happening two years later. A person complained about seeing a book sold under their name for 550 USD. It contained gibberish and the sales were recorded as income to the IRS even though the owner of the account couldn't find out where the money went. Amazon wouldn't tell her who had opened a bank account in her name. I suppose they prefer to deal with such accounts behind the scenes.
It's not too confusing to me. It gets the IRS off the trail of the actual person getting the money - they don't care that the IRS still wants money - they are confident that it wont get traced. It's truely obfuscation.
Wire the funds offshore to a place more willing to look the other way for a small fee:do this a few times to other accounts in other countries, park the clean non-taxed cash offshore, get a cc or debit credit for the clean account...profit
Sure you spend sum cash on cleaning the funds, you're still not paying taxes on that cash win/win
