Can rurality help hide money-laundering?

Using businesses in rural America for money laundering is a central premise of the Netflix series "Ozarks," and it's also the gist of this Politico story about the recent shenanigans of a Ukrainian oligarch in a small Illinois town.  The story is headlined, "A Ukrainian Oligarch Bought a Midwestern Factory and Let it Rot. What Was Really Going On?"

Here's an excerpt from the latter, which is definitely not fiction:  

Recently, wealthy elites have begun looking for other places to park their funds, places they think authorities won’t look. Places that offer all the financial secrecy these elites need, but that few would associate with lives of luxury. As a result, shadowy and sometimes ill-gotten wealth has started pouring not just into yachts and vacation homes, but also into blue-collar towns in the U.S. whose economic struggles make them eager to accept the cash.

One of these small towns appears to have been Harvard, Ill., a depressed factory community that allegedly became part of a sprawling network used by Ukrainian banking tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky to launder hundreds of millions of dollars earned from a Ponzi scheme. Kolomoisky, who was recently hit with U.S. sanctions for “significant corruption” in Ukraine, is separately accused by the Justice Department and Ukrainian investigators of using a constellation of shell companies and offshore bank accounts to move millions in misappropriated funds out of Ukraine and into a series of real-estate investments in the American Midwest. (Kolomoisky denies wrongdoing, claiming he made the investments with his own money.)

My article on how rural spatiality conceals crime is here.