Laundering money and ID’s
Criminals and their money launderers do not like all reporting obligations that financial institutions have nowadays. Banks (almost) worldwide report suspicious transactions to local government through Suspicous Activity Reports (SAR’s) or equivalents. Although mostly overflooded with SAR’s, law enforcement actually catches launderers and confiscates criminal funds using them.
How to get around that? In Belize a laundering scheme was uncoverd that shows how you can beat the system if you are desparate enough. A short summary; have a company that provides financial transactions use identity details of citizens that are not related to the transaction to file transactions. The paper trail will not be related to the criminals but to unknowing individuals.
The names of thousands unknowing Belize City residents were used in the alleged money laundering operation carried out by a MoneyGram subagency in Belize. Belize’s drivers license database had been compromised and the stolen ID details were used to book financial transactions. The Coye family who ran the Moneygram agency were arrested. $1.5 million in cash was seized during a search in one of their houses in December 2008. This week, the former Moneygram ‘master’ agent was arrested on money laundering charges as well.
7News investigation shows that the Coye Moneygram Sub-Agency was linked to a company called Money Exchange International which provided a service called Instadollar to internet gamblers in Peru, Turkey, and the United States. That service was used primarily by those gambling on sporting events with what’s called a Sportsbook based in Costa Rica. A sports book allows betting on international, mostly us sporting events.
But online gambling isn’t legal in the United States so through the Instadollar service, these gamblers would be instructed to send the money to Belize using Moneygram. And this is the important part – to do so – they have to have a name to send it to – so that’s where the driver’s license database came in. Those names – from the Prime Minister to the Governor of the Central Bank were used by Instadollar and then sent to Belize.
That’s where a clerk working for the Coye’s Money Exchange International would then fill in the particulars such as the address and the license number and then sign a false signature. The volume of transactions was incredible; on some days, it would exceed $110,000.00 using dozens of names of unsuspecting Belize City residents daily.
Sources inside the investigation informed 7News that over the one and a half year period under investigation, it is estimated that the Moneygram master agent and Coye Sub-agency shared a commission of BZ$7.5 million on transactions of over BZ$35 million. That’s a broad outline of how the names were being fraudulently used – but how the database was compromised is still a mystery.
Last week, former Belize’s ‘master agent’ Fuller was arrested on money laundering charges related to his companies OMNI and FULTEC. In June, Fuller told 7News that as master-agent he had nothing to do with the operations of his sub-agency and was unaware of any suspicious activity or any inordinate volume of transactions. But the FIU’s decision to charge him suggests that they take a different view. At Omni which owned the Moneygram master agency, shareholders included Fuller and his wife, the CEO in the Ministry of Tourism Mike Singh others.
Detail: Omni was the master agent for Moneygram in Belize and Fultec Systems set up the City Council’s driver’s license system. The companies sit in the same compound and on Friday, before his arrest, the namesake of Fultec and General Manager of Omni Dean Fuller told 7News he’d be doing an internal investigation to see if there was any possibility that it could be connected to his company.
This is not the first cases where employees in financial institutions steal ID’s to log financial transactions to keep authorities at bay. It is one of the biggest we have seen documented publicely so far. Are you comfortable the companies that keep your personal data are doing a good job at keeping it safe? Without your knowing you could be registered as money laundering and be the subject of a dozen SAR’s……
http://www.guardian.bz/component/content/article/53-headlines/277-moneygrams-money-laundering-mess
