http://www.innopay.com/content/changing-dynamics-financial-crime-digital-era
Hm this article differentiates by saying that 'criminal money transfer' is the act of Bob anonymously transferring anonymous Alice finances, and 'money laundering' is the act of anonymous Alice making it seem like her anonymously obtained finances come from a legitimate business venture. I would personally call that entire process money laundering though.
In general, we can distinguish between three types of financial crime:
Terrorism financing: obfuscating the source of the money used by terrorist organizations (money in, point A)
Criminal money transfer: transferring money from point A to B (within the system), preferably untraceably
Money laundering: obfuscating the destination of the money laundered by criminal organizations (money out, point B)
Also from this article:
It can be a daunting task for governments to monitor financial crime. The current anti-crime measures are based on the traditional bank networks. However, with the increasing digitalization the money transfers are increasingly harder to follow. Therefore, it remains important to focus on the end points. No matter what, money will always have to enter and exit the system to be of use to the criminal.
This article probably does the best at summing up some of the points I made, though
http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/seminar/papers/bortner.htm
Obviously, transferring hard currency to ecash and then spending the ecash is an appealing opportunity to potential launderers'. What if the ecash is then transferred back to a regular hard currency account? This may seem a foolish act as the entire purpose is to reap the benefits of anonymous ecash. However, presently, there are no opportunities to purchase automobiles or real property by the exclusive use of anonymous ecash. Thus, the desire to convert private and untraceable ecash into a more functional means of purchasing is understandable.
Whether a regular, non-Internet currency account already exists or must be created to deposit the transferred ecash into may be irrelevant. Filing a CTR would be a legal necessity if the transfer amount is over the $10,000 reporting limit, as the transfer will deposit hard currency in a tangible, institutionalized, and regulated bank account. A transfer from completely anonymous ecash to hard currency might alert law enforcement as to the existence of the ecash account. While this alone would not track down laundered money, it might put a suspicious agent on notice.
AKA E-currency to anonymize the money but then cash out to multiple fake IDs or anonymous ATM cards to avoid having so much unaccounted for money suddenly appear in accounts / transfers tied to your name that you get raided anyway. Making the anonymous cash you have obtained appear to have a legitimate source is a different problem, a different part of the process.
Anyway use whatever techniques you want, but the ones I mentioned are not noob and you wont be able to show me a single report of someone who used them properly being arrested via financial intelligence because it hasn't happened yet. The people who are being busted via financial intelligence are using ONLY western union transfers + fake ID pick up, like a ton of people in the carder scene do. Or they are using Paypal, like TFM. Or they are using fraudulently obtained mainstream reloadable cards and cashing out at ATM with non anonymized loads, like a lot of small time drug vendors use. or they are using CIM money mule networks to fake ID mail boxes, like TFM and a lot of other busted groups have done. Also, even these cases are giving headaches to LE enough that people using these techniques are still usually being busted in ways not related to financial transfer. Actually, I can't even think of a case of someone who used a fraudulently obtained reloadable card being busted via financial intelligence off the top of my head anyway.