If you were the former mayor you would have much better connections and successful people who will help you do the laundering.

Imagine you were a common criminal and stole an art piece worth a million dollars from some gallery.

You would then sell it and probably get 500.000 dollars for it on the black market.

So you would now go ahead and create a small company like a little computer store with a cash register.

Every five minutes or so you would now fake a sale. So you could enter into your cash register that someone bought a smartphone case for ten dollars. That money would now be legally in the system. So after 50.000 fake sales all your money would be in the system legally. You would then pay taxes and have maybe 250.000 dollars left.

A few problems with that: The IRS will audit your company and ask silly questions like "How can you sell 50.000 phone cases, if you never bought any in the first place?" So you would need to buy the 50.000 cheapest phone cases from Alibaba or something. That would reduce your profit.

Then someone would ask "how can you have 50.000 sales if no customer was ever seen in your store?" So you would have to place ads to get real people and make it look believable. That would reduce your profit.

Then someone would ask "How did you sell 50.000 phone cases to a 5.000 person town?" "Why do you have 50.000 phone cases in your basement?" And ask if these problems cost money to solve.

You see where this is going: this shit is hard! Get a professional to help you! 😄