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How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

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Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#21

Post by hpoe »

saul_goodman wrote: post #10

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels there... A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after the dealers make money to catch them so t…

Well the reason for that is that the large cartels are already part of the game.

SOCOM needs a place to get the money for their off the books operations, and if you start looking into special operations units it turns out there are a lot of those guys pretty heavily involved in drug trafficking.

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#22

Post by 542458 »

singlow wrote: post #7
ptsneves wrote: post #3

I always wonder how this is legal in the U.S.A? Creating a fake bank in another country sounds like committing fraud in another country. At worst it can be they would be charged with money laundering themselves. What is the line of what is acceptable at entrapment in the United States? What stops any agency from creating permanent fake banks for example? I am glad drug lords get busted. I hate them, but I think if th…

Were the bank activities themselves illegal? It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity. It sounds like they were just soliciting banking services in a way that was attractive to illegal actors. Even if the banking services themselves were not legal, it would seem like entrapment if they used that to charge them with banking crimes. If NYPD operated a Limousine service in hopes that crim…

“ It would only be entrapment if they were soliciting the illegal activity.”

I’d like to note that this isn’t how entrapment works in the US (or many other places). If I’m an investigator, it is not entrapment for me to go to government employees and say “Hey, I’ll give you $100 in exchange for state secrets. You in?”. Covertly soliciting illegal activity to try to catch criminals is not entrapment. It only rises to the level of entrapment when it is something that would cause a “normally law-abiding person” to break the law, or that the defendant would otherwise have had no criminal intent - for example, “Give me state secrets or I’ll kill your wife” would be entrapment.

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#23

Post by mschuster91 »

saul_goodman wrote: post #10

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels there... A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after the dealers make money to catch them so t…

> to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates.

If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs - including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed stores, mental health care and social services would be accessible for everyone, and fact-based drug education in school be the norm, not the exception.

The reality is that drug policy has direct roots in racism - marijuana and crack prosecution intended to specifically target hippies and people of color.

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#24

Post by briandear »

mschuster91 wrote: post #23
saul_goodman wrote: post #10

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels there... A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after the dealers make money to catch them so t…

> to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates. If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs - including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed stores, mental health care and social services would be accessible for everyone, and fact-based drug education in school be the norm, not the exception. The reality is that drug policy has di…

Racism? A bit of a stretch there. Hippies were mostly upper middle class white kids rebelling against their post-war indulgent upbringing. And alcohol prohibition before that was aimed at everyone.

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#25

Post by mschuster91 »

briandear wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates. If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs - including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed stores, mental health care and social services would be accessible for everyone, and fact-based drug education in school be the norm, not the exception. The reality is that drug policy has di…

Racism? A bit of a stretch there. Hippies were mostly upper middle class white kids rebelling against their post-war indulgent upbringing. And alcohol prohibition before that was aimed at everyone.

One of Nixon's top guys explicitly admitted that the motivation was racism: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...

    "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#26

Post by scarecrowbob »

briandear wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates. If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs - including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed stores, mental health care and social services would be accessible for everyone, and fact-based drug education in school be the norm, not the exception. The reality is that drug policy has di…

Racism? A bit of a stretch there. Hippies were mostly upper middle class white kids rebelling against their post-war indulgent upbringing. And alcohol prohibition before that was aimed at everyone.

Per the grandparent, yes "marijuana and crack prosecution" have explicitly racist elements.

Specifically, the 1930s anti-cannabis is specifically anti-Hispanic, and the question of why there are massively different sentencing laws around crack and powder cocaine seems to me and most of the people I know to have many obvious racial elements.

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#28

Post by Consultant32452 »

saul_goodman wrote: post #10

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels there... A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after the dealers make money to catch them so t…

I think it’s bold to assume the government even wants to nab the big guys.

One example is fentanyl is killing us by the thousands every year. We know who the guy is who owns the factor that’s providing most of the fentanyl and precursors to the cartels. He lives in China and runs an also legit chemical factory. He commits the crime right in the main factory in the open. We politely asked China to arrest him, but they said no. No real political pressure to do anything, no assassinations, nothing. Thousands dead every year.

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#29

Post by adolph »

suifbwish wrote: post #19
saul_goodman wrote: post #10

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels there... A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after the dealers make money to catch them so t…

You nailed it. You have to let the fruit ripen before you pick it. Also if you don’t go after the suppliers, you will have more distributors to harvest later. It’s literally a cash crop for the DEA/police

Feature or bug? Cui bono?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono

Re: How the government set up a fake bank to launder drug money (2012)

#30

Post by reedjosh »

Everyone is surprised to find the government does shady stuff, but many of these operations are even acknowledged like Iran-Contra where the government sold arms to the embargoed Khomeini government to generate black money to fund the Contras.

> Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo.[2] The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

It's also discussed that the CIA does similar things with poppies to generate black money to fund regime changey activities.

Here's one such article which is a weird source, but points to more mainstream sources for evidence.

https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/a-conspiracy-theory-that-be...

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