Everything you wanted to know about money laundering, but were afraid to ask. From Teddy Bears to Trump Towers, Here’s How Money Laundering Works There are many ways to hide corrupt cash, but for big amounts it’s hard to beat casinos and real estate, which just happen to be the Trump family’s core businesses. DAVID HOWARD 10.28.17 12:00 AM ET The Sinaloa drug cartel has long been the most powerful and sophisticated operation of its kind, a criminal enterprise that reaches into 24 of Mexico’s 32 states and as many as 50 countries. But for all its military-style sophistication and expansive taproots, the billion-dollar organization keeps bumping up against a basic, old-world problem: how to move cash. The cartel sells most of its drugs in the United States to addicts who often pay for their heroin fixes in wads of singles and fives. That eventually adds up to more than $20 billion that has to make its way back over the border every year, which is a logistical nightmare: One kilogram of cocaine translates into three kilograms of cash. Smugglers shoehorn stacks of bills into air mattresses, washing machines, cereal boxes, and anything else with a cavity and decent odds of sneaking past border guards—but the sheer glut of greenbacks mandates savvier solutions. Which is how Sinaloa got interested in clothing and teddy bears from China. In recent years, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, massive amounts of cash from narcotics sales have flowed into businesses in Los Angeles’ fashion district as part of what’s known as the black market peso exchange. This is how money laundering works in the age of hard-charging international trade. Those California businesses use the drug proceeds to purchase cheap clothing and footwear in bulk from China. The goods are stored in warehouses in L.A., then driven to Mexico or shipped to Colombia. Cartel operatives at these destinations sell the items at profits that the drug lords then pocket as legitimate revenue. “One kilogram of cocaine translates into three kilograms of cash.” In one variation of this scheme, runners dropped off bags containing up to $100,000 at the L.A.-based Angel Toy Company. The toy company’s Chinese executives then deposited this in the company bank account in quantities of less than $10,000 at a time, to avoid triggering what’s known within banks as a Suspicious Activity Report. Then the toy-company operatives wired money to a factory in China to purchase stuffed animals and dolls, which were then shipped to Colombia, where another party facilitated their sale. estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion in dirty money gets laundered annually. These offenses are hardly victimless. A report released in August by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition points out that when criminals successfully cash in on their enterprises through money laundering, it exacerbates society’s deepest problems (PDF). “We see it in our communities: the opioid, methamphetamine, and cocaine epidemics are devastating,” the report says. “Financial fraud, fraud in government contracting, identity theft, and worse endanger individuals and our communities and waste taxpayer dollars. Terror finance and sanctions-busting threaten national security.” Some of the illegitimate currency is now moving through new digital channels like cryptocurrency, but many of the practices simply represent new variations on old methods. Continued https://www.thedailybeast.com/from-teddy-bears-to-trump-towers-heres-how-money-laundering-works
Excerpt: Hit up a casino. In a single month in the summer of 2015, employees at the River Rock Casino Resort in British Columbia accepted more than $13 million worth of $20 bills from high-roller Asian VIP clients believed to be connected to illegal activity, according to a government report into anti-money laundering report released in September (PDF). These clients dropped off cash on or just off the casino property “at unusual times, generally late at night,” the report said. Other players were allowed to make buy-ins of $500,000 without filling out large cash transaction reports, required for amounts of $10,000 or more—money that could then be laundered as casino winnings. Macau last year tightened regulations on its $29 billion casino industry, the world’s largest, after it earned a reputation as a Chinese laundering haven. Considering the generally unscrupulous nature of such enterprises, it’s hardly surprising that investigators have frequently nosed into Donald Trump’s casinos—and found plenty of similarly problematic issues. CNN reported earlier this year, for example, that the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City violated money laundering rules 106 times in its first 18 months of operation in the 1990s.
Buy some real estate. Money launderers have poured cash into real estate markets in places like Florida, Arizona, and California—to the tune of $104 billion between April 2014 and March 2015, according to the FBI. One Canadian official recently sounded alarms in Vancouver after identifying $57.1 million worth of residences purchased in the city’s pricey Point Grey district. Which might not have raised any eyebrows, except that the buyers claimed to be students. Reporting no income. This is reportedly an area of significant interest for special counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with investigating the Trump campaign’s possible links to Russia. Donald Trump Jr. spoke in 2008 about the onslaught of Russian money into the family’s business portfolio, and the American Constitution Center for Law and Policy has gone as far as to suggest that the family’s real estate empire “is fueled by money laundering.”
Back when the banks would no longer give trump any loans because he was such a bad businessman and kept going bankrupt, he accepted several large loans from the mafia in NY and NJ. As payback, he let the mob use his businesses to launder their money. It was natural for him to keep doing it for the Russians when they became his financial backers.
I don't know if you opened the links in the article you posted, but this one was especially interesting: " No Regrets From Trump Neither his campaign nor his presidency have led Trump to shy away from selling real estate to shell companies – one of the possible indicators of money-laundering. In fact, a USA Today investigation published in June found that since Trump won the Republican nomination, "the majority of his companies’ real estate sales are to secretive shell companies that obscure the buyers’ identities." That's a much larger proportion than the two prior years, USA Today found, but to be fair, the main concern is not so much money-laundering anymore as "that the secretive sales create an extraordinary and unprecedented potential for people, corporations or foreign interests to try to influence a President." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...rs-make-clear-shift-secretive-llcs/102399558/
