In the past years since the start of the criminalization of money laundering and the enforcement of anti money laundering laws in the 1970s and more vigorously in the 1980s and 1990s, evidence from court cases and reported suspect transaction has given an indication that the most common money laundering typologies has been in the realm of drug trafficking, organized crime, corruption, illicit dealing in weapons, human trafficking, fraud and theft.
The act of successful money laundering fuels the perpetration of the above crimes by providing the criminals with avenues to conceal their deeds from law enforcement agencies and ultimately provides them with the rewards for their criminality in the form of money which would then appear to be legitimate.