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How Money Laundering Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Wake up, Chuck Bryant, what's up, Buttercup?
0:20
Speaker 1: Chuck's payton. He's ready to get out of here. So
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Speaker 1: we're gonna don't watch these rainy days. You know, rainy
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Speaker 1: days on Monday. They always get you down. Karen Carpenter,
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Speaker 1: what a waste? Yea said, Yeah, so this is not
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Speaker 1: on anorex yet. No, it's not. Actually it's on money laundering,
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Speaker 1: which we can't or you can or can't say, I
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Speaker 1: think is one way to put it. Whether or not
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Speaker 1: Karen Carpenter ever engaged in that, God Rest her soul.
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Speaker 1: I believe that she did not do. You never know, Chuck.
0:49
Speaker 1: I'll go on record, Chuck, you ever see scar Face?
0:52
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? So you have seen it? Oh? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: many times? Edward g Robinson, James Cagney, Oh and I
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Speaker 1: thought you're talking to us. I just don't like it
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Speaker 1: when you gloat. Um. So you know that one scene
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Speaker 1: when he's sitting there laundering the money with the guy
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Speaker 1: who turns out to be the cop, and for some
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Speaker 1: reason to Palma made it so like, uh, it actually
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Speaker 1: simulates the eight hours that they're supposedly sitting there doing it.
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Speaker 1: That was actually pretty good lesson in what not to
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Speaker 1: do when you launder money, and I think the moral
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Speaker 1: to it was never louander money with an undercover police officer.
1:27
Speaker 1: My favorite part of that movie is when he buries
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Speaker 1: his face in the huge mountain of cocaine on his
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Speaker 1: desk at the end. That is a good part. And
1:34
Speaker 1: thousands of bullets, hundreds of bullets could not even take
1:37
Speaker 1: him down at that point, but they did eventually. No, no,
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Speaker 1: yeah they did. Yeah. No. I couldn't remember if he
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Speaker 1: died in an explosion, but there because there are grenades
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Speaker 1: in that scene. That is a good, good movie. Anyone
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Speaker 1: who hasn't seen that can sign up to be derided
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Speaker 1: by Chuck and I um on our blog, which we'll
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Speaker 1: talk about later. But first let's talk about money laundering
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Speaker 1: shock Lets. So you know, like for the most part,
2:03
Speaker 1: it's a well you would think for the most part,
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Speaker 1: it's it's the realm of drug dealers, like they use
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Speaker 1: cash almost exclusively. They've got to wash it. It's dirty money.
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Speaker 1: They can't account for it. Um and the the text system,
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Speaker 1: especially in the US, is set up in such a
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Speaker 1: way that that's supposed to be obvious where which is
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Speaker 1: where money laundering comes in. It's a way around this,
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Speaker 1: you know, declaration of Hey, I made a bunch of
2:33
Speaker 1: money by selling heroin, which you can't really do because
2:36
Speaker 1: they bust you for selling heroin. I'm surprised the government,
2:38
Speaker 1: wouldn't you say that's great. Yeah, I mean really, honestly,
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Speaker 1: what would the I r S contact the DA or
2:47
Speaker 1: would the I r S just be like, you're an
2:49
Speaker 1: upstanding citizen, you're drug dealer. Well, that's one of the
2:52
Speaker 1: big arguments for legalization of drugs is you can just
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Speaker 1: tax the heck out of it and legitimize it and
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Speaker 1: make a lot of money off of it. And again,
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Speaker 1: remember when we were talking about how Moon's Done works.
3:01
Speaker 1: During prohibition, it kind of added this forbidden aspect to
3:05
Speaker 1: to drinking, and so of course drinking increase, right, So
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Speaker 1: that makes you wonder if drug use would drop. But
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Speaker 1: that's neither here nor there. It isn't. But what I
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Speaker 1: was saying was is you would think it's mainly drug
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Speaker 1: traffickers engaged in money laundering is because a million dollars
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Speaker 1: in cocaine estimated at twenty ki lows, right, um or
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Speaker 1: twenty key lows for our metric friends, Yeah, um and uh,
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Speaker 1: a million dollars in cash weighs two hundred and fifty
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Speaker 1: six pounds, So it's kind of tricky, right. The thing is,
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Speaker 1: though it doesn't it turns out it's not just drug
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Speaker 1: dealers who are laundering this heavy, heavy cash because the
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Speaker 1: UN estimates this is a two thousand five estimates. The
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Speaker 1: latest I can find that the global drug trade is
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Speaker 1: valued at about three billion dollars annually. It is a
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Speaker 1: lot of dope, but it's estimated that the value of
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Speaker 1: all of the money that's laundered every year globally is
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Speaker 1: somewhere between five hundred billion and one trillion. So clearly
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Speaker 1: the entirety of the drug trade three times over couldn't
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Speaker 1: account for the high end estimate now of of all
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Speaker 1: the money that's being laundered in the world every year. Terrorists, terrorists,
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Speaker 1: big white collar guys, um, basically anybody who's come across
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Speaker 1: a substantial amount of money that you can't just walk
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Speaker 1: around within your pockets and you don't want to pay
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Speaker 1: taxes on right, you you launder the money, right, So
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Speaker 1: how how do you do this? Oh? And also I
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Speaker 1: should probably say the vast majority of the cash that's
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Speaker 1: getting washed is the U. S. Dollar for two reasons.
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Speaker 1: Number one, it's pretty much the de facto international currency.
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Speaker 1: We learned about that in our audiobook, right, I'm sorry,
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Speaker 1: our spoken word album um. And Uh. Also because the
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Speaker 1: US is some of the strictest banking transparency laws in
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Speaker 1: the world. So if you have some dollars and you
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Speaker 1: want to get it back into the US, you've gotta
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Speaker 1: wash it first, Right, So how do you do that?
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Speaker 1: Let's talk about the three steps Chuck. Number one is
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Speaker 1: called placement three steps the money long. Placement basically means
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Speaker 1: that the launderer UH inserts dirty money into a legitimate
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Speaker 1: um financial institution, Like so they'll put their money in
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Speaker 1: a bank, but it's dirty money. This is the point.
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Speaker 1: This is the riskiest stage. This is like the water
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Speaker 1: making that tense, hollow sound is it's filling up in
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Speaker 1: the drum of the washing machine. Right. And it's risky
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Speaker 1: because cash, large amounts of cash are always a red
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Speaker 1: flag UH these days, and in fact, in the US,
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Speaker 1: I believe the limit is a ten thousand dollar deposit.
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Speaker 1: It's not just the US that holds that standard, but
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Speaker 1: definitely sure. Yeah, the International Task Force, well, they're required
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Speaker 1: to report anything ten thousand or I believe it's anything
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Speaker 1: totally in ten thousand within like a five day period,
5:54
Speaker 1: Is that right? I think one day, one day. Okay,
5:56
Speaker 1: you're right, but yes, still the golden number if you're
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Speaker 1: laundering money is to stay below tan grand in a day, right,
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Speaker 1: in deposits. So once you've got that done and your
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Speaker 1: dirty money is in a bank, lots of it, you
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Speaker 1: move on to step two, which is called layering, and
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Speaker 1: that means you start to send this money out via transactions. Right,
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Speaker 1: we're talking bank to bank transfers, wiring money, um, investing
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Speaker 1: in some high value items like you can go buying
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Speaker 1: yacht or something like that. And you're basically just trying
6:24
Speaker 1: to send the money out and spread it around to
6:27
Speaker 1: all different sorts of places. This is why I consider
6:29
Speaker 1: the rent cycle the rent cycle. Yes, yeah, it's so
6:32
Speaker 1: it's being agitated and and um yeah, so this is
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Speaker 1: and that's the most complex. This is part of laundering
6:39
Speaker 1: money as well, because you're taking one lump sum and
6:42
Speaker 1: then dividing it into as many things as you possibly can,
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Speaker 1: which makes it hard to trace, which is really essentially
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Speaker 1: the whole point to money launderings. You want to make
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Speaker 1: it really hard to trace back to you. So then
6:53
Speaker 1: we come, Josh Josh E to integration, which is phase three,
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Speaker 1: and this is when the money comes back and the
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Speaker 1: mainstream economy um looking like legitimate transactions. You divest from
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Speaker 1: those legitimate businesses you invested in, you sell that yacht um,
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Speaker 1: or you transfer money from these kind of shady banks
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Speaker 1: or or or banks in in countries of shady systems,
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Speaker 1: which we talk about in a minute, into you know,
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Speaker 1: US banks again or something. And at that point, as
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Speaker 1: Joe Pesci would say, the money is laundered, yes, and
7:29
Speaker 1: that that was too I think I call it. That's
7:31
Speaker 1: sad that you know that I'm ashamed of you right now.
7:35
Speaker 1: The next thing, you know, you're gonna tell me you
7:36
Speaker 1: watch The Closer. I know I've never seen that show,
7:40
Speaker 1: but I'm a big alright, so so good, this is nice.
7:44
Speaker 1: I was at one point until The Closer. Let's get
7:48
Speaker 1: offer so um, you know, since there's so many different
7:53
Speaker 1: countries out there, that have banking secrecy UM protection. Basically,
7:59
Speaker 1: there's so many places where you can go buy a
8:02
Speaker 1: yacht and they're not going that. They don't have to
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Speaker 1: buy laws say where'd you get this money? Um, And
8:08
Speaker 1: businesses don't have to say, hey, where'd you get this money?
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Speaker 1: If you're investing in them. That it seems like it
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Speaker 1: would be impossible to catch. It's it's hard to catch too.
8:17
Speaker 1: It is, well, Josh is certainly not from a lack
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Speaker 1: of looking, because there are a lot of places that
8:21
Speaker 1: try to find money launderers, like the Department of Justice,
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Speaker 1: State Department, FBI, I R S, d e A. They've
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Speaker 1: all got money laundering departments or money laundering. They're not
8:34
Speaker 1: laundering money obviously, no, they're they're looking for money launders.
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Speaker 1: So um, yeah, the I R S can find you,
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Speaker 1: and I imagine if you're a money launder, they can
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Speaker 1: find you to write. And there's also since we're talking
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Speaker 1: about those are the United States based organizations. It gets
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Speaker 1: global too because it's it usually involves global transactions. That's
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Speaker 1: kind of the key to the whole thing. So there's
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Speaker 1: something called the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering,
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Speaker 1: the f a T That was the other organization. I
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Speaker 1: was saying that has that ten tho dollar reporting required. Well,
9:06
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. The UN gets involved to our buddies at
9:09
Speaker 1: the u N. Yeah, the World Monetary Fund, So that's
9:12
Speaker 1: who's looking out for International Monetary Fund. I'm sorry about
9:16
Speaker 1: that one, right. So do you want to talk about
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Speaker 1: the some of these methods, Josh, Like the Paco exchange, Yeah,
9:22
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, hit it? Okay, so, um that is
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Speaker 1: the black market Colombian payso exchange system. And this is
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Speaker 1: like the the the world standard um and actually it
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Speaker 1: is centered in Colombia. What happens is is like say
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Speaker 1: you are a drug trafficker and you have a bunch
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Speaker 1: of dirty money. Chuck, say it. I am a drug
9:41
Speaker 1: trafficker and I have a load of dirty money. Well
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Speaker 1: I just happened friend to be a paso broker, and
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Speaker 1: I can clean that money for you. And you want
9:48
Speaker 1: to hear how I'm gonna do it. Well, what do
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Speaker 1: you mean by clean, Josh? I'm gonna make it so
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Speaker 1: that it's legitimate again. Okay, So what's going to happen
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Speaker 1: is you're going to give me your dirty money. Okay,
9:59
Speaker 1: I'm going to give it to a Colombian importer who's
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Speaker 1: going to buy a bunch of American made goods, and
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Speaker 1: we're gonna buy him on the black market because we
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Speaker 1: don't want to pay any taxes on any of this. Right,
10:12
Speaker 1: So the importer goes in orders a bunch of stuff,
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Speaker 1: gets it under the radar, UM, imported to Colombia, sells
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Speaker 1: it for paces, takes the paces, the the the Colombian
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Speaker 1: importer is going to give me the pasos, take a
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Speaker 1: little bit for himself, any profit he can make off
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Speaker 1: of it. He's gonna pay me back the equivalent of
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Speaker 1: the U. S. Dollars I gave him in pasos. I'm
10:33
Speaker 1: gonna skim a little off top and bot a boom
10:35
Speaker 1: bout a. Being my friend, you have just converted your
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Speaker 1: dirty U. S. Dollars to clean Colombian pasos. Thanks than
10:42
Speaker 1: go forth, do whatever you like. We've got a deal.
10:45
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for It's basically it is UH
10:48
Speaker 1: and actually sadly it is very easy and it was
10:50
Speaker 1: fine under the radar, like we said, for many many years,
10:53
Speaker 1: and apparently the Colombian government UH and the American government
10:58
Speaker 1: we're trying to figure out, um what was going on
11:01
Speaker 1: with all of these illegal u S imports and came
11:04
Speaker 1: to figure out also, oh yeah, well Columbia also has
11:06
Speaker 1: a huge money loan doing problem and they're known understand it,
11:10
Speaker 1: ye right, Yeah, so that's the old black market Columbia
11:14
Speaker 1: pays so exchange two steps shuffle, very nice and apparently
11:18
Speaker 1: that's just a one stop shopping deal. If you want
11:20
Speaker 1: to laund your money, that's the place to go. But
11:22
Speaker 1: there's also another one, and I know this one's your
11:24
Speaker 1: favorite because of the name smurfing. Uh, structuring deposits is
11:30
Speaker 1: uh the formal name, but they call it smurfing. And
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Speaker 1: basically this entails when you break up large amounts of
11:35
Speaker 1: money into smaller um less suspicious amounts. So in the
11:40
Speaker 1: US that's got to be below ten tho dollars um because,
11:43
Speaker 1: like we said, that's when banks have to report you.
11:46
Speaker 1: And uh, it's the money is deposited. The smaller amounts
11:49
Speaker 1: are deposited into one or more banks by people called smurfs,
11:53
Speaker 1: that's what they call them. Yeah, for no apparent reason.
11:56
Speaker 1: So smurf that unless pay O, the creator of the Smurfs,
11:59
Speaker 1: was caught doing this, maybe that's where it was, Maybe
12:01
Speaker 1: that's where it originated. It sounds like a smurfing good
12:04
Speaker 1: idea to me. Have you ever seen the smurf carpet
12:07
Speaker 1: bomb ad? No? I think it was for um UNICEF.
12:13
Speaker 1: It was a UNICEF ad and they played it in
12:15
Speaker 1: Belgium and basically it was an anti war public service
12:19
Speaker 1: announcement and they used the Smurfs and the Smurf's villages
12:22
Speaker 1: just carpet bombed and they're all like killed, and they
12:24
Speaker 1: showed the aftermath and burning smurfs are walking around. It's
12:28
Speaker 1: really something you should look it up. Jeez. Uh. So
12:31
Speaker 1: that's disturbing onto overseas banks, which is always big. You
12:35
Speaker 1: always hear about offshore accounts and you know, growing up
12:38
Speaker 1: you hear this from watching chips and stuff like that
12:40
Speaker 1: in my era, and you hear about offshore accounts and
12:42
Speaker 1: always pictures some like bank floating in the ocean. You know,
12:45
Speaker 1: that's not what's going on there. But they're basically countries
12:48
Speaker 1: have really lax or not lax, but they just have
12:51
Speaker 1: secrecy laws and allow anonymous banking to take place. Yeah,
12:55
Speaker 1: like bah rain Um is one that's not in the Caribbean, Hamas,
13:00
Speaker 1: the Caymans, Caymans, Hams, Caymans, Hong Kong shore. Uh, there's
13:04
Speaker 1: a place called Macau off the coast of China underground
13:08
Speaker 1: alternative banking, which kind of cracks me up. I don't
13:10
Speaker 1: know that I would invest in an alternative bank. This
13:13
Speaker 1: seems kind of like tribal in nature. Yeah, exactly, like
13:15
Speaker 1: it's existed long before any banking regulations. Very popular in
13:19
Speaker 1: Asia and now than Pakistan, the Hawalla system in Pakistan
13:23
Speaker 1: and India and the five Chin system in China. Yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: so basically it's a it's a trust system. There's no
13:28
Speaker 1: paper trail, no paper, which is key because you want
13:31
Speaker 1: to lounder money, you don't want paper. That's all point.
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Speaker 1: It's pretty it's very much like the offshore accounts, Like
13:37
Speaker 1: these are secret accounts. You they won't reveal your identity. Um,
13:42
Speaker 1: there's no paper trail that's public in any way, shape
13:45
Speaker 1: or form. So these are really good places to use
13:48
Speaker 1: if you plan on laundering any money, right, not that
13:51
Speaker 1: we would encourage that, because it's illegal, You get busted,
13:53
Speaker 1: you go to jail. No, although if you look at
13:55
Speaker 1: if you put together some of these seemingly random podcasts
13:58
Speaker 1: we've done, you could make move Chine sell it lounder money.
14:02
Speaker 1: Londer money and exactly early on and then get out.
14:09
Speaker 1: So there you go, and here we are not making
14:14
Speaker 1: take your own advice, right. And then Josh, there are
14:16
Speaker 1: shell companies. Of course, when you have like a fake company,
14:18
Speaker 1: you'll set up that really doesn't sell or manufacture anything.
14:21
Speaker 1: What's the difference between a shell company and a front company?
14:24
Speaker 1: Is there a difference? There's a difference. You want to know?
14:26
Speaker 1: Then why don't you talk? I was just trying to
14:27
Speaker 1: set you up. But the shell company is set up,
14:30
Speaker 1: it doesn't really do anything. It's only it only really
14:33
Speaker 1: exists on paper, um, and it's express purposes the longer money.
14:37
Speaker 1: A front company is real company, right, but it's meant
14:40
Speaker 1: to longer money too. But you could say it's a store.
14:42
Speaker 1: You could actually go into the store and buy something,
14:45
Speaker 1: but it really the purposes to longer money. And that
14:48
Speaker 1: actually leads us to one of the problems with money laundering.
14:51
Speaker 1: I mean, you ask, why why would I care if
14:54
Speaker 1: people are laundering money, you know, aside aside from the
14:57
Speaker 1: obvious one like I hate drug dealers, you know, and
14:59
Speaker 1: and don't want them laundering the money, or I hate terrorists.
15:02
Speaker 1: Clearly everybody hates terrorists. Yeah, but but for this reason,
15:06
Speaker 1: the last part with the front company, it affects local
15:10
Speaker 1: economies and that small businesses can't compete with the front
15:14
Speaker 1: company because they're not trying to turn a profit off
15:16
Speaker 1: their product, so they can sell it like add or
15:18
Speaker 1: below cost if they want and drive other companies out
15:21
Speaker 1: of business. Well that seems a little flashy to me.
15:23
Speaker 1: If you're a front company, sure, I would think you
15:26
Speaker 1: just kind of want to stay even keel the whole time. Right, Yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: But greed, brother, it's true. Same with the ponse it's
15:32
Speaker 1: greed takes a hold and then you're screwed. Same with
15:35
Speaker 1: the what it's a Ponzi scheme, but on a much
15:38
Speaker 1: a much larger level, there's other bigger problems, like it
15:40
Speaker 1: can affect whole financial sectors or economies if enough money
15:44
Speaker 1: is is laundered through. Well. One of the reasons why
15:47
Speaker 1: is a lot of these countries that these things are
15:48
Speaker 1: running through were small countries and they don't have like
15:51
Speaker 1: the big, huge economy United States does. So someone's laundering
15:55
Speaker 1: you know, seventy five million dollars through a tiny little country.
15:59
Speaker 1: It's all vaults. You know, that's gonna affect the economy
16:02
Speaker 1: in that country. Yeah, Plus no one pays taxes on it,
16:04
Speaker 1: so you and I end up making up, well, not you,
16:06
Speaker 1: because apparently you don't pay taxes, but I do now,
16:08
Speaker 1: pal Okay, I just didn't in the mid early decade.
16:13
Speaker 1: Yeah uh so, yeah, we end up making up for
16:15
Speaker 1: that taxpayers do by having to pay higher taxes. Right.
16:18
Speaker 1: But I think ultimately the reason why the d o J,
16:21
Speaker 1: the FBI, the I R S, and the d e
16:23
Speaker 1: A are all involved in trying to catch money Launders
16:26
Speaker 1: because the government ain't making any money off of it. Exactly,
16:29
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I mean we're talking if
16:31
Speaker 1: we're if it's a trillion dollars, you know what's thirty
16:35
Speaker 1: of that billion? I gotta tell you, the U S
16:37
Speaker 1: could use that three billion right now if you can
16:39
Speaker 1: get you that much of a chunk of it, right
16:41
Speaker 1: and we'd go give it to some institution that's collapsing
16:44
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Yeah, that's that's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
16:50
Speaker 1: Oh wait, that was from the Ponzi scheme when wasn't it. Yeah,
16:53
Speaker 1: but that's still a nice term. Okay, thanks a lot, um, So, Chuck,
16:56
Speaker 1: you want to talk about a couple of famous um
17:00
Speaker 1: any laundering busts. I would love to talk about Crazy Eddie. Okay, good,
17:03
Speaker 1: because I want to talk about Franklin GIRARDA. Didn't that great?
17:05
Speaker 1: When it works out like that, it's different Crazy Eddie.
17:08
Speaker 1: And I remember this guy when I lived in New
17:10
Speaker 1: Jersey seeing the Crazy Eddies TV commercial. Oh yeah, he
17:13
Speaker 1: was one of those guys that it's exactly how you
17:15
Speaker 1: would think Crazy Eddies. Uh. This is in the nineteen eighties,
17:19
Speaker 1: Eddie and Tar Crazy Eddie's Electronics. He skimmed millions of
17:23
Speaker 1: dollars uh from his own company to hide it from
17:27
Speaker 1: the I R S. So he was doing this, he
17:29
Speaker 1: had some co conspirators and eventually he thought, you know what,
17:33
Speaker 1: I should send this money back into my own company.
17:36
Speaker 1: Disguised his revenue right because he was going to launch
17:39
Speaker 1: an initial public offering, so I'll inflate my soon to
17:43
Speaker 1: be stock quote And he did substantially right bucks or something. Yeah,
17:49
Speaker 1: but that's false money. So it was over inflated and
17:53
Speaker 1: the result for him was bad news. He laundered more
17:56
Speaker 1: than eight million bucks and was busted and flew to
18:00
Speaker 1: Israel and they found him in nine they extradited him
18:04
Speaker 1: back to US. To stand trial and he went to
18:07
Speaker 1: the Who's Scott for eight years? Yeah, which isn't that bad.
18:10
Speaker 1: I imagine he probably had a lot of money staffed
18:12
Speaker 1: away waiting for I know, I was kind of surprised
18:14
Speaker 1: most of these prison sentences in here, like six to
18:16
Speaker 1: eight years. I think it would be a little more
18:17
Speaker 1: than that. That's why I think the Bernard made Off
18:20
Speaker 1: sentence is gonna be so cute, just gonna get like
18:22
Speaker 1: a hundred plus years. Yeah. So, um, can I talk
18:25
Speaker 1: about my guy now, Franklin Girardo. Uh and you want
18:29
Speaker 1: to put an R toward the end of it, but
18:31
Speaker 1: it's not. It's Gerrado Grado. Um. So he was actually
18:35
Speaker 1: an economist. Um. And apparently economists are really good people
18:39
Speaker 1: to get to to longer money for you because they
18:42
Speaker 1: know exactly what they're doing. You just need to get
18:45
Speaker 1: a crooked economist pretty much. And from what I understand,
18:48
Speaker 1: this guy was it. Um. There was a Colombian drug
18:50
Speaker 1: kingpin named Jose Santa Cruz Londono and uh he had
18:56
Speaker 1: Gerrado basically placed the drug money into Colombian banks, right,
19:02
Speaker 1: which we've already seen Columbia not that big on the
19:05
Speaker 1: banking regulation. Laws, right, and then from there he started
19:09
Speaker 1: making wire transfers and deposits to a hundred different accounts
19:12
Speaker 1: that have been set up some and made up names,
19:14
Speaker 1: some in family members names. Um in sixty eight banks
19:18
Speaker 1: in nine European countries, right, and he was doing this
19:22
Speaker 1: really well for a while. Um. I think he managed
19:24
Speaker 1: to launder thirty six million bucks. Um, but he was smurfing. Actually,
19:30
Speaker 1: do you mean something else there or you mean smurfing?
19:33
Speaker 1: He was smurfing as far as money laundering goes. I thought,
19:35
Speaker 1: you're just using smurflight? Does your mind the getter there? Um?
19:39
Speaker 1: He was. He was probably doing that too because you know,
19:42
Speaker 1: he's laundering millions of dollars. So all the smurfy wanted
19:46
Speaker 1: um the uh the he just threw me off there,
19:50
Speaker 1: chucks sorry um so, but he was smurfing in that.
19:53
Speaker 1: Like none of his deposits top ten thousand dollars, right,
19:57
Speaker 1: So imagine how active this guy was, and he had
20:00
Speaker 1: a lot of money to deal with. He got busted
20:03
Speaker 1: basically in two ways. Um. A red flag was raised
20:05
Speaker 1: when a bank in Monico collapsed, and UH an audit
20:09
Speaker 1: revealed that that he had a bunch of accounts that
20:12
Speaker 1: didn't have his name on it, but could be traced
20:14
Speaker 1: back to him, which is fairly unusual. And then really
20:17
Speaker 1: what when he was actually arrested? This is great. His
20:20
Speaker 1: neighbor called the cops to file a noise complaint because
20:25
Speaker 1: Gerardo was running his money County machine all night. The
20:28
Speaker 1: cops show up and this guy surrounded by millions of
20:31
Speaker 1: dollars in cash. I love those machines you see m
20:33
Speaker 1: in the movies. Yeah so cool? Right, yeah, they are
20:36
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I've never had enough money to put him.
20:38
Speaker 1: Mine would go yeah, it would be over. Yeah, you
20:43
Speaker 1: have fifteen dollars lucky. Um so yeah, that that's how
20:47
Speaker 1: Gerardo got busted. He got seven and a half years,
20:49
Speaker 1: and he's in Harvard. Man, we should note. Yeah, so
20:53
Speaker 1: it's not all just untoward. Uh That's why I purposely
20:57
Speaker 1: left off the Harvard educated economists, because I mean, I think,
21:02
Speaker 1: look at made off. He's an intelligent guy, as crooked
21:05
Speaker 1: as they come. It's called white collar, dude. It surely
21:08
Speaker 1: is for a reason. Um, So I guess do you
21:12
Speaker 1: want to just quickly go over operation Juno? Uh? Yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: do you you know what I'm talking about? Because you
21:18
Speaker 1: know it happened right here in Atlanta. This is the
21:20
Speaker 1: headquarters for it. That was a part of it. What
21:22
Speaker 1: do you really know? But this was in Atlanta and
21:25
Speaker 1: the d e A pulled this one off. And it
21:26
Speaker 1: was not a sting operation for pregnant teens the movie Juno.
21:32
Speaker 1: This is pre pre that. This is is when it ended.
21:36
Speaker 1: And basically it was a sting operation. They set up
21:39
Speaker 1: drug traffickers, gave them resources to to turn their drug
21:43
Speaker 1: money and from dollars into pay so's used in the
21:45
Speaker 1: original uh Paso scam, and they busted uh you know,
21:50
Speaker 1: forty people, ten million bucks they seized. And what substantial
21:54
Speaker 1: is the amount of cocaine that they seized. Yeah, thirty
21:56
Speaker 1: six kilograms of cocaine, No, buddy, thirty six hundred yea,
22:03
Speaker 1: three thousand, six hundred kilograms of cocaine. That puts scar
22:07
Speaker 1: face even to shame, it really does. You can't stick
22:09
Speaker 1: your face in that mount and walk away from it. No.
22:12
Speaker 1: So that was Operation Juno. That was the d e A.
22:14
Speaker 1: That's about as successful as it comes from what I understand. Yeah,
22:17
Speaker 1: I always have mixed feelings about staying operations though, to
22:20
Speaker 1: be honest, it's shifty, it's susceptive, It is well. At
22:23
Speaker 1: the same time though that you're getting you've busted these people,
22:26
Speaker 1: so the end result is nice, but you know, macabillion
22:30
Speaker 1: and justifies the means. Sure in some cases. I think
22:33
Speaker 1: that's a definite model for a lot of law enforcement.
22:36
Speaker 1: I just think it's interesting that a cop can go
22:37
Speaker 1: up and say, hey, man, you want to launder this money,
22:40
Speaker 1: and we'll make it happen, and then we'll arrest you
22:42
Speaker 1: for it. Clearly, the Colombians who are busted never saw
22:45
Speaker 1: a scarface, so that's a money laundering. Um. If you
22:49
Speaker 1: want to try your hand at it, you know pretty
22:51
Speaker 1: much everything you need to know right now. Yes, but
22:53
Speaker 1: you should not do that. And we want to thank JR.
22:55
Speaker 1: From Portland, Oregon. Jr was who suggested this. Yeah, thanks
22:59
Speaker 1: j R. That was a good idea right out of
23:00
Speaker 1: the suggestion. But we wonder why j R. But whatever
23:03
Speaker 1: he actually said his email, I don't want to try this.
23:06
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. So if yeah, if he follows up
23:09
Speaker 1: with counterfeiting, he'd like to hear that one then or PONTI, Well,
23:12
Speaker 1: actually that we're digging your way out of prison, right Yeah, Well,
23:16
Speaker 1: if you want to know a little more, this is
23:17
Speaker 1: actually a great article by our colleague Julia Layton. Excellent writer. Um,
23:21
Speaker 1: you can type in money laundering in the handy search
23:24
Speaker 1: part how stuff works dot Com. Don't go anywhere because
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Speaker 1: we're about to blast your ears with our spoken word
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23:34
Speaker 1: Josh and me. We don't write in correct? Me again,
23:36
Speaker 1: grammer police and getting that a lot. I know. Yeah,
23:39
Speaker 1: it's called the Stuff you should know, super Stuff Guide
23:42
Speaker 1: to the Economy, and we get to go out and
23:45
Speaker 1: interview folks and go on location and we really break
23:48
Speaker 1: down economics and the economy into the way that everyone
23:51
Speaker 1: can understand. It was a lot of fun to do, Yes,
23:53
Speaker 1: it was. We recommend it highly for three nine on
23:55
Speaker 1: iTunes and type and super stuffed in the iTunes search
23:59
Speaker 1: part should be the thing that comes up. And what's
24:02
Speaker 1: most amazing to me is it doesn't suck. No, it's good.
24:04
Speaker 1: We're very proud of it and we appreciate your support
24:07
Speaker 1: thus far. And if you guys can support us with this,
24:09
Speaker 1: we might get to record another one yea, something more
24:11
Speaker 1: interesting than the economy, because you know, Chuck blogged me
24:15
Speaker 1: yes blog. We also need to give a quick shout
24:17
Speaker 1: out to our blog called Stuff you Should Know on
24:19
Speaker 1: the website how stuffworks dot com, post today, Me in
24:24
Speaker 1: the morning, Chuck at night. You should visit twice yes
24:26
Speaker 1: to see you. And we do a podcast recap on
24:29
Speaker 1: Friday's so that's where we can all sit around and
24:31
Speaker 1: chat about what we do here. And you said you
24:34
Speaker 1: can find on the right rail of the homepage. Yes, sir,
24:37
Speaker 1: and uh that means thank you for bearing with us.
24:39
Speaker 1: We tried to do a little shorter than usual because
24:42
Speaker 1: it's listening mail time. So this comes to us from
24:47
Speaker 1: Meg and I'm just gonna call this exceptional listener mail
24:50
Speaker 1: only in one today. Can know which one this is?
24:53
Speaker 1: It's good epilepsy, Yes, yeah, it's good. So in our
24:56
Speaker 1: Deja Vu podcast we talked a little bit about epile
25:00
Speaker 1: te and that it's tied to deja vu many times,
25:03
Speaker 1: as is smelling lavendar before you have a seizure. So
25:06
Speaker 1: Meg writes in and she wanted to thank us for
25:09
Speaker 1: talking some about epilepsy as she is an epileptic. She
25:13
Speaker 1: has a temporal lobe epilepsy, and she said she does
25:16
Speaker 1: suffer from deja vu on a fairly regular basis, but
25:19
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean wait for a seizure, which is
25:22
Speaker 1: what you said. Um, it is a seizure basically. Oh really,
25:26
Speaker 1: that's how she describes it. H deja vu is a
25:29
Speaker 1: simple partial seizure. It can give way to a complex
25:32
Speaker 1: partial or generalized seizure, but it doesn't always have to.
25:36
Speaker 1: And she is she's pretty amazed by her own epilepsy.
25:39
Speaker 1: She and she said, the brain does crazy things when
25:43
Speaker 1: it's working normally. Just imagine what it can do when
25:46
Speaker 1: it's not. Some of the simple partial seizures I've included
25:50
Speaker 1: smelling lavender, deja vu, tunnel vision, sparkly lights, and they
25:56
Speaker 1: sometimes but not always, give way to complex partial seizures
25:59
Speaker 1: that can leave you drained for quite a while. So
26:01
Speaker 1: there's obviously downside. It's not all and lavender. So we
26:06
Speaker 1: just want to thank Meg for writing in. And she said,
26:09
Speaker 1: one day maybe we can do something on epilepsy. But
26:11
Speaker 1: I know eventually we're gonna have a health podcast here,
26:13
Speaker 1: so we're probably not allowed the clam burder, but thank
26:17
Speaker 1: you Meg for that and good luck with your epilepsy.
26:19
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks for sharing Meg, that's pretty pretty cool. Exceptional
26:23
Speaker 1: listener mail indeed, Um, if you have anything exceptional to say,
26:26
Speaker 1: or you just want to say hi, or you want
26:28
Speaker 1: to tell us, UM that we say we interchange iron
26:31
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26:35
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
26:39
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