Why cash convertion to run away?? Cryptos... Buy a few major cryptos, convert it to anonymous one like monero but there are more... Relocate to another continent, Europe is good, there are some nice countries that are free tax for crypto gains so one doesn't even pay much taxes, and one can move from country to country with little to no checks. And bye bye.
That doesn't work. Schwab has her name and account. Europe will most definitely extradite a criminal fugitive to US in a second.
Anyone saying it's hers, she should have gotten a lawyer, etc. is dreaming. Now if it was of meaningful size (say 10M+) and you don't care about fam, friends etc. I'd say convert to BTC and run. Otherwise, just give it back and avoid all this hassle.
Would park it in an short term interest yield ETF at 2-3% annualized and use that as Portfolio Margin collateral for short strangles on S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 at 8% annualized. Then they call, I would say, "yes, ma'am, I will deliver the cash at date X in 1/2 weeks". Until they call I would be pocketing $11,000 per month and withdrawing it.
She can keep it if she's willing to stay in jail after a legal battle. She could stay in jail and the bank would have no way to revert the transaction unless she wanted to.
The bank can indeed reverse the transaction. I'm not sure where you get the idea that they cannot. In fact, the bank can legally withdraw the full amount into negative debit balance and charge you for overdraft fees. You are not allowed to keep a deposit that you did not personally put into your account. The fact that she immediately bought a car and a house with the funds actually made things considerably worse for her legally. That act provided the pretext for the criminal charges. Likewise, if she had moved the money to another account in her name and bought securities or BTC with it - that would have been construed as theft as well. If she had simply left the funds in the Schwab account and didn't touch them - Schwab would have eventually tracked it down and reversed the transaction and interest payments but my guess is that they wouldn't have pressed criminal charges.
The premise I put forth was if the transaction had been in crypto in the first place, not bank transfer to crypto. It would be traceable and she'd be liable, but it'd be up to her to give it back
None of the countries are viable choices. Brazil is still too close. Russia and Iran are too violent.