I know nothing about the mechanics of crowd funding, I just know how it works in general. I have a thought that it could be used to launder money if someone was really, really interested in laundering money and had the tools at their disposal.

Am I being too paranoid, or is this a legitimate concern? I can see someone sending their minions out to get small travel cards, make pledges to a crowd fund site with fake names, and eventually funnel the cash to a carrier. But, I don't know the mechanics well enough to know how plausible this scenario is.

Any help is appreciated.

As with most products there is some risk it can be abused or used for money laundering etc..

I don't see, given the information you have provided, how you would even be able to detect the laundering of funds.

Thanks, that's the thing - I'm trying to determine if I should be suspicious of funds disbursed from crowd funding sites and perform some level of due diligence on that if I see them coming in to an account.

Since the crowd funding business is your customer I would do additional due diligence to ensure it is a legitimate business and or is involved in the kind of business that your bank is comfortable with.

If you really want to do some extra work (I probably wouldn't) you could go to the website and donate an odd dollar amount and see if it shows up in the customers account.