Money-Laundering Primer

Outside of crime of passion (e.g., murder committed in a jealous rage), criminals and criminal organizations commit crime because they are motivated by greed. Greed is a vice as old as humanity and is considered in Christian ethics to be one of the “seven deadly sins.” And once greedy criminals start accumulating large sums of illicit money, they have to try to hide its origins.

Nobody knows the origin of the term money laundering, but in the United States it is thought to have originated in the 1920s or 1930s during the era of Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and other infamous gangsters. They took illicit cash that originated from a variety of criminal enterprises such as gambling and Prohibition-era alcohol sales, and mixed it with clean money in cash-intensive businesses such as laundromats and restaurants. In other words, they tried to wash their dirty money and make it appear clean and legitimate.

The term gained use in the early 1960s with the proliferation of the sale of illegal narcotics. It became more widely known during the Watergate investigation of the 1970s, in which suitcases of cash played a role in the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. The pithy and memorable term “follow the money” was reportedly coined by the “Deep Throat” informant who helped unravel that same scandal.

Ironically, it was also President Nixon who declared the “War on Drugs.” In order to give criminal investigators tools so they could follow the narcotic money trails, in 1970 Congress started passing a series of laws later augmented by rules and regulations that collectively are known as the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).

Although money laundering had been around for a long time, the BSA was the first legislation that systematically tried to control the growing problem. The BSA mandated a series of reporting and record keeping requirements. The data are now commonly called “financial intelligence,” “financial transparency reporting requirements,” or simply “BSA data.” Today, Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) acts as the designated administrator of the BSA.

Financial Intelligence

There are various types of financial intelligence. The original BSA required the first three record-keeping requirements listed below. Over the years, additional types of financial intelligence have been created. A few of the most important reports follow.

How Is Financial Intelligence Used?

The tens of millions of financial intelligence reports that are produced in the United States and other countries (see discussion of the Egmont Group) every year have proven to be a tremendous resource to help criminal investigators follow the money trails. The financial data are valuable not only in money-laundering investigations but also in providing some financial transparency in other types of criminal activity as well. Querying a subject's name in the financial databases may disclose further identifying information, including an address, telephone number, or business association that might be keys to the investigation. The intelligence might also provide some insight or at least a snapshot of the suspect's financial transaction, which could be very valuable to investigators. However, financial intelligence alone rarely makes a case. Generally, law enforcement will have to combine the financial intelligence with information from other databases (for example: criminal databases, immigration databases, customs databases, commercially available information about businesses, social network sites, etc.). By connecting the dots between individuals, companies, bank accounts, and so on, a picture of financial relationships and money flows begins to develop.

Most often, financial data are used reactively by law enforcement. In a reactive case, a crime has occurred and a criminal investigator is assigned to solve the crime through a variety of investigative techniques, including interviews, developing informants, performing surveillance, and conducting an undercover investigation. Financial intelligence can help in developing identifying data, establishing networks, and constructing a paper trail.

Financial crimes investigations can also be proactive in nature. In these situations, a criminal violation has not yet occurred. Instead, law enforcement examines financial intelligence (CTRs, CMIRs, SARs, etc.) and tries to identify anomalies, suspect patterns, and trends. The information is then used to intercept criminal activity in progress and take appropriate countermeasures.

Availability of Financial Intelligence

Treasury's FinCEN is responsible for the collection, warehousing, analysis, and dissemination of financial information in the United States. It is the country's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). In theory, official consumers of financial intelligence at the federal, state, and local levels can contact FinCEN and ask for appropriate queries to be made of the financial databases. There are various programs and platforms for these official inquiries. Queries should be as specific as possible and include known identifying information. Of course, FinCEN only has access to financial intelligence that has a nexus or link to the United States. FinCEN also grants certain law enforcement entities such as the FBI direct bulk downloads of financial information.

Official consumers can also request financial intelligence from an appropriate interagency/departmental task force. A representative from the Department of Treasury (FinCEN or the IRS) or the Department of Homeland Security (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) should have direct access to most of the same financial databases. Generally, non-Treasury and DHS enforcement agencies are limited in their abilities to make direct queries.

Law enforcement can also gain access to financial intelligence through regional federal, state, and local task forces; these include Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), High Intensity Financial Crime Areas (HIFCAs), and U.S. Attorney SAR Review Teams.

In 1996, FinCEN was a founding member of the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units. The idea behind Egmont was for member countries around the world to obtain, analyze, and disclose financial intelligence. The FIU's focus is to support host-country law enforcement and other officials, but Egmont Group members also support official requests for information from other Egmont Group members. In effect, a FIU is a foreign FinCEN. Today, there are approximately 150 FIUs officially accredited to the Egmont Group. Although there are different FIU models (some are investigatory in nature and some are administrative), and different countries have various types of financial intelligence and reporting thresholds, all have the equivalent of SARs—known frequently overseas as Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs).

Legislation

In 1986, the United States became the first country in the world to make money laundering a crime and enacted a law that is still one of the most powerful in the world (Title 18, U.S. Code Section 1956, also known as the Money Laundering Control Act). It provided federal agents and prosecutors the necessary tools to fight money laundering and made several significant amendments to the BSA, including criminalizing structuring to evade BSA reporting requirements and increasing civil and criminal penalties for money laundering. An amendment to the Right to Financial Privacy Act made it easier for banks to furnish suspicious transaction data to federal enforcement agencies without the risk of being sued by clients.³

The law also has an extraterritorial reach if at least part of the offense takes place in the United States or even if money is only transferred through the United States. As a result, the United States can insert itself into dollar-based transactions or U.S. dollar transfers that are settled through correspondent bank accounts in the United States.

The Money Laundering Control Act was followed by other legislation over the years that strengthened the U.S. AML/CFT regime. Noteworthy laws include the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, the Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act of 1992, the Money Laundering Suppression Act of 1994, the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act of 1998, and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.⁴

Investigating Money Laundering

The U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities agree that dirty money is laundered in three recognizable stages, as discussed in Chapter 2: placement, layering, and integration.

In the placement stage, illicit cash must somehow be deposited into financial institutions. Criminal organizations attempt to put their money in banks for the simple reasons that they want to be able to spend it and protect it. Because large amounts of cash are involved, law enforcement feels that criminals are at their most vulnerable when they try to deposit or place illegally obtained funds directly into a bank account. For example, in the United States, if one uses the estimate that $100 billion is laundered every year from the street sales of narcotics, that translates into approximately 20 million pounds of currency!⁵ It poses a tremendous logistical challenge for criminal organizations to place that much cash into banks in ways that do not raise suspicions. The most common way this is done is by smuggling the dirty money out of the country to destinations where the cash will be readily accepted. For example, tens of billions of dollars of bulk cash representing the proceeds of narcotics sales are smuggled across the southern U.S. border into Mexico every year. Another common placement technique used by money launderers is to use runners, couriers, or smurfs that deposit small amounts of money in financial institutions in ways that do not trigger mandatory currency reporting requirements imposed by the BSA.

During the layering stage, criminals and criminal organizations attempt to separate the source of the funds by way of complex transactions such as wiring funds to multiple accounts in multiple jurisdictions. Criminals do this in order to make it difficult for law enforcement to follow the money trail.

Finally, in the integration stage, criminals and criminal organizations try to create the appearance of legitimacy by, for example, investing the placed and layered funds in tangible goods such as property, businesses, or even investing in the stock market.

Traditionally, money laundering has been equated with the proceeds of the sale of narcotics. While narcotics trafficking still represent a hefty percentage of dirty money in the world, the United States recognizes approximately 300 “predicate offenses” or “specified unlawful activities” for charging a defendant with money laundering. Predicate offenses include fraud, smuggling, weapons trafficking, and terrorist finance. The international standard as championed by the FATF is “all serious crimes.” And as we have seen, there is increasing discussion about recognizing tax evasion as a predicate offense for money laundering. The primary predicate offense for TBML is customs fraud.

Money-Laundering Methodologies

Per our discussion in Chapter 1, in 1989 the G-7 created the FATF. The international anti–money-laundering policymaking body championed 40 recommendations for countries and jurisdictions around the world aimed at the establishment of AML and after September 11 CFT countermeasures. These included the passage of AML/CFT laws, the creation of financial intelligence, know your customer (KYC) compliance programs for financial institutions and money services businesses, the creation of Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), and other safeguards. Over the years, FATF-style regional bodies (FSRBs) have spread around the world. The FATF and FSRBs conduct mutual evaluations, support member countries in formulating AML/CFT regimes, and periodically conduct studies on money-laundering threats and methodologies.

According to the FATF, there are three primary methods of laundering money:

1. Via financial institutions and nonbank financial institutions. This includes the placement and structuring of deposits of tainted money into banks, wiring or layering the dirty money to multiple accounts in multiple banks in multiple jurisdictions to confuse the paper trail, and then using the laundered money by integrating it into the economy by way of purchasing high-value properties and goods.
2. Bulk cash smuggling is the physical smuggling of illicit cash from one jurisdiction to another where it will be more readily accepted for deposit.
3. Trade-based money laundering. This also includes underground financial systems, because historically and culturally most are settled on the misuse of international trade, including customs fraud.

Although not currently included in the FATF top-three methodologies, the FATF and concerned international observers are calling attention to new payment methods (NPMs). They are also sometimes called e-money or digital cash. Examples include Internet payment services, cyber-currency, stored-value cards, prepaid calling and credit cards, digital precious metals, mobile payments (m-payments), or the use of cell phones to send/receive/transfer money and digital value.

The use of shell corporations that lack transparent beneficial ownership information is not necessarily considered a top money-laundering methodology. However, the use of such phantom companies is extensive in various money-laundering schemes.

Criminals often mix or use many of the above methodologies and techniques in combination, thereby increasing the difficulty of following the money, digital-cyber, or value trails. And criminal and terrorist organizations are adept at exploiting vulnerabilities in our global AML/CFT countermeasures and the challenges posed by differing venues, jurisdiction, and lack of expertise. They are also attracted to countries that have weak enforcement or lack the political will to enforce their laws. And, as we have seen, corruption is the great facilitator.