According to experts at the Financial Action Task Force, bulk cash smuggling is one of the three principal international money laundering methodologies. Bulk cash refers to the large amounts of currency notes that criminals can accumulate through illicit activity – particularly narcotics trafficking. Smuggling, in the context of bulk cash, refers to money launderers’ subsequent attempts to physically transport the cash from one country to another – for example from the United States to Mexico—where it is easier to launder.
While estimates of U.S. narcotics sales vary widely from $50 billion to $100 billion annually, $100 billion in drug sales may generate as much as 20 million pounds of currency! As a result, those who launder narcotics proceeds have a logistics problem. A money launderer attempting to make a bank deposit of $1 million in $100 bills would have a stack of cash standing 5 feet high and weighing more than 20 pounds! Smaller denominations would make the transaction even more absurd. It takes fifty thousand $20 bills, weighing more than 100 pounds, to make $1 million.
The logistics issues coupled with mandated financial transparency reporting requirements imposed on financial institutions by the U.S. government, have increasingly driven narcotics trafficking organizations to try to smuggle bulk cash into jurisdictions such as Mexico, where placing their ill-gotten gains into financial networks is much easier….
…There are exciting developments in an emerging breed of software that can explore and analyze data to help uncover unknown patterns, links, opportunities and insights that can drive pro-active, cause-based decisions. Often referred to as “predictive analytics,” it is now available to help law enforcement sort through large volumes of data to predict the likelihood of targeted activity. A limited pilot program has proved very successful in intercepting narcotics flowing north from Mexico into the United States. I believe this same technology could revolutionize law enforcement decision-making at the border by increasing our odds of identifying, intercepting, and seizing bulk cash.
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