Narcotics Cash Shipped in Bulk to U.S. Banks
EmailDrug dealers are shipping billions of dollars in bulk packages to Mexican banks in the latest international money laundering scheme, U.S. officials tell ABC News. The government has alerted U.S. banks to be on the lookout for improper relationships with Mexican banks.
Here’s how it works. Dealers ship their drug dollars in bulk to Mexico. Then the cash is mingled with other funds in Mexican banks so that the original source of the money is buried in a mass of dollar-peso transactions. Once ‘laundered,’ the money is shipped or sold back to the U.S.
An advisory issued by Treasury last week and obtained by ABC News warned that there has been a "dramatic increase" in this type of smuggling. At the International Drug Enforcement meeting in Montreal this week, financial crimes experts said that to date more than $10.4 billion in illicit drug profits have been transferred in bulk.
Senior U.S. drug enforcement officials tell ABC news that drug traffickers in Mexico have taken control of some "Casas De Cambio," the storefront currency exchanges, and they’ve used the fronts to collect drug profits and funnel them back into the U.S.
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The last sentence in this article is humorous to me. When I was an exchange student in Mexico in the early 1990′s, all the foreign students were told by locals that to get the best exchange rate you had to go to the casas de cambio owned by drug traffickers. Identifying them wasn’t difficult; they were the ones paying significantly more than the banks, hotel lobbies and legitimate exchanges, and requiring little personal identification. In fact, I was told one location paid a premium if Mexican pesos were bought with cash versus travelers checks.
Ironically, the drug traffickers also happen to operate a number of coin-laundries and other businesses where it is easy to hide the source of the money being transacted.
I hope that Senior U.S. drug enforcement officials aren’t just finding out about this now.
Posted by: A Mar | May 12, 2006, 2:52 pm 2:52 pm
How can you begin to solve this problem. Just try to phone a bank for info and you get push the dial number circus. Who can they investigate, there’s no one to talk to.
Posted by: Frank | May 14, 2006, 1:20 pm 1:20 pm
What a disgrace of logic and absence of knowledge of money101. Even if some of the facts are correct… the reporter shows absolute ignorance of domestic or international banking, nor commerce.
Adding insult, there are the obvious details missing:
*Are we talking about US-based drug dealers? …
*What period of time is “to date”?
*Transferred to where?
*Do junkies all over the REST OF THE WORLD go around paying for drugs with us dollars?….
The credibility here is a non-issue.
Posted by: denmadrid | May 15, 2006, 3:33 pm 3:33 pm