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It was bound to happen once financial regulations -- like the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) -- were tightened. Accounting principles, and the ability to exploit them, become important to teams, like hiring a scout who can unearth a teenage prospect. And so you end up with de facto swap deals that don't look right to most observers.
We'll get to how they work in a minute, but there are two things to bear in mind here.
The first is that, at least regarding the cases we've witnessed in the Premier League -- Tim Iroegbunam and Lewis Dobbin between Everton and Aston Villa; Ian Maatsen and Omari Kellyman between Chelsea and Villa; Douglas Luiz and Samuel Iling Jr and Enzo Barrenechea between Villa, again, and Juventus -- aren't examples of cheating.