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Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

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Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#61

Post by suriya-ganesh »

mmoskal wrote: post #10
crazygringo wrote: post #4

> ...heaved seven heavy suitcases onto the conveyor belt... > ...and a few million more dollars worth of cash in eight suitcases... > ...In October 2020, two other women weren’t so lucky. They were questioned at a Heathrow departure gate by officers of the Border Force, the agency in charge of U.K. customs and immigration. One of the women told officers she checked five suitcases to Dubai because she wasn’t sure what…

Survivor bias? maybe they just don't catch the ones that only had two suitcases of cash.

This. + Hastiness and overconfidence. When you do it over a long stretch of time, you try to stretch the limits occasionally

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#62

Post by crazygringo »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #18
crazygringo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is in the article: > The machines can be programmed to find cash, but they aren’t because they are operated by airport-security agents, responsible for passenger safety, not customs and immigration officials. As to why the UK government doesn't pass a regulation that airport security is also responsible for detecting large amounts of cash, I have no idea.

As a British citizen, I'm quite happy with the detection of money laundering not being a responsibility of airport security. It might initially make sense to check for cash, because once the money leaves the country it's much harder to track. Yet, that's the same for any time a criminal leaves the country - should airport security be responsible for checking your cases for stolen goods? Imposing such duties onto airp…

None of your arguments make any sense to me.

It doesn't seem expensive -- it's literally a configuration option on the scanners already installed.

It doesn't have anything to do with stolen goods generally, it's simply about detecting stacks of cash that there's already a specific law stating that you must declare when leaving the country.

By definition this isn't regular domestic policing, because it's inherently an issue that can only occur at the border.

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#63

Post by fbdab103 »

johnneville wrote: post #51
fullspectrumdev wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separation of duties. Airport security do one job, border farce/customs do the other. Turning airport security into customs and excise agents would be legally challenging. Same way TSA in America largely don’t give a flying fuck when Amercians from legal states board international flights with cannabis products such as gummies or vape pens - that’s a problem for the customs people on the other side. I should note her…

despite the separation of duties, at first glance, it would appear worthwhile to me for the customs agencies to buy access to the CT scanners or just the output from the security agencies so they could easily detect the cash maybe there are laws regarding privacy or just bureaucratic challenges that prevent this though

On the gripping hand, traveling with cash should not be a crime. We already surrender so much privacy to the TSA.

I would fear that we would be hearing about more "TSA vs $20k in stacks of cash" civil forfeiture cases.

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#64

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

vaadu wrote: post #49

Money sniffing dogs? They train dogs to sniff for plants, food and drugs. Cash in baggage should be easy?

But cash is everywhere, and it's not illegal to have it in your luggage if declared or below a certain amount. Seems like you'd get a ton of false positives as it would be very difficult to train a dog to only alert if it smells a lot of cash. But I did read another article that said they sprayed their vacuum packed cash bags with coffee and air freshener - don't know if that works that well against cash sniffing dogs.

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#65

Post by solalf »

crazygringo wrote: post #4

> ...heaved seven heavy suitcases onto the conveyor belt... > ...and a few million more dollars worth of cash in eight suitcases... > ...In October 2020, two other women weren’t so lucky. They were questioned at a Heathrow departure gate by officers of the Border Force, the agency in charge of U.K. customs and immigration. One of the women told officers she checked five suitcases to Dubai because she wasn’t sure what…

The article gives some details we can go off of. 5 suitcases with $500k each, is $2.5M. Alfassi charged 10% so $250k.

Out of that you have to manage all the logistics (as they said his fee covered it). - Pickup of the cash - Counting - Hiring and managing mules (which means paying for Clarke’s salary and expenses who lives between Dubai and London, with, I assume, lots of flying and housing for her and her family required) - Getting mules to your location - Paying for things like Covid tests, a few expenses (I assume some food, and other little things) - Driving them to the airport - Flying them in business class to Dubai - Paying for a local resort while they stayed put a few days - Flying them back to the UK

Now they flew two people at a time, so all of the above is doubled for each trip.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this added up to around $50k per trip, which is 20% of the $250k fee for just transportation of the cash (does not include the actual laundering being done locally).

Margins are likely still “respectable” in the end, but you can’t have mules taking 10% of the suitcase’s content if you’re to run a profit.

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#66

Post by SoftTalker »

titanomachy wrote: post #56
kayodelycaon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s pretty simple. To many people, $3,750 is a huge amount of money. It’s easily several months salary. I think a lot of people would be relatively unaware of how illegal a given thing is and would instead see the amount of money being offered as representative of the risk. Too much and they would get suspicious.

This was the UK. I don’t think $4k is “many months salary” for a lot of people in the UK.

It's certainly the case in the US for many people, why would it not be in the UK?

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#67

Post by SoftTalker »

throwup238 wrote: post #59
blincoln wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also surprised by that claim. Every time I've flown with a thick book in my carryon, it's been flagged for inspection. One of the staff told me once that it's because thick stacks of paper look a lot like plastic explosive on an X-ray. I have to imagine a suitcase full of cash would look the same way.

US currency is made with a mix of 75% cotton and 25% linen fibers, rather than wood pulp like paper. They're less dense so they probably don't look the same on an xray.

But they have anti-counterfeiting metallic strips and ink, you'd think that would jump out on an x-ray image.

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#68

Post by [deleted] »

toephu2 wrote: post #16

> Most airports worldwide, including in the U.S., don’t scan passenger luggage for cash, a costly undertaking in equipment and personnel. I think this is false. Anytime I've flown with cash in my checked in luggage, it was always stolen and it was obvious someone went through my suitcase. Then I stopped doing that obviously. (happened in U.S. and Indonesia)

[deleted]

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#69

Post by kortilla »

SoftTalker wrote: post #66
titanomachy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the UK. I don’t think $4k is “many months salary” for a lot of people in the UK.

It's certainly the case in the US for many people, why would it not be in the UK?

Even at effective minimum wage of 11.80 an hour[1], that’s only 2 months of salary. That’s not life altering in any way and wouldn’t be worth prison time to people in general. People have to have been tricked about the risks or were coerced.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...

Re: Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports

#70

Post by toast0 »

imglorp wrote: post #21

If someone really wanted to slow illicit businesses, they would look at ones of the US's biggest exports: shell corporations. Delaware and South Dakota churn them out legally by the hundreds of thousands. This is how all that laundering, tax evasion, and worse is performed. Tie then all to owners and halt much of this.

Shell Corporation is based in London these days ;p
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