"Money laundering" describes the ways that criminals (not just mobsters) hide ill-gotten money behind legitimate fronts. At its simplest: you run a street-level drug ring. You get paid in cash. You can't put it in the bank under your own name because it'd be found out. So you hire someone to fly around the country (or overseas) and open bank accounts in their name or in fictitious names. Usually, money laundering schemes are much more complicated--involving mobsters investing in legitimate businesses, buying overseas real estate under the names of phony companies, establishing corporations and holding companies that are fronts for them. Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President in 1972 laundered vast quantities of cash contributions in overseas banks and fronts to pay off the "Plumbers" (Watergate burglers) and Don Segretti and other "dirty tricksters."