Financial Crime Online

Wells Fargo & Co’s Wachovia Bank agreed to cough up $160 million to end a criminal money laundering probe into the use of its exhange houses in Mexico by drug cartels. The government agreed to defer prosecution on a criminal charge that Wachovia did not set up an effective anti-money laundering program from 2003 to 2008. [...]

About 15 million people around the world use heroin, opium or morphine, fueling a $65 billion market, warned Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The trade is fueling terrorism and insurgencies: The Taliban raised between $450 million and $600 million in the past four years by “taxing” opium farmers [...]

On its website, ICE proudly presented the largest cash seizure in Colombia ever: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents along with Colombian and Mexican law enforcement officers between Sept. 9 and 18 made the largest bulk cash container seizure in Colombia and the United States – more than $41 million in U.S. currency [...]

In Mallorca (Spain) the police dug up 4.3 million euro ($6.2 million) in cash and 7.5 kilograms of jewelry in Palma de Mallorca. Members of a local drug ring buried the loot, under a doghouse annex garage. The police mentioned that they have been preparing for the bust for a couple of months. The police [...]

CNN ran an interesting story on the rise of drug trafficking in Africa and reported that Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market. While the European market [...]

How about that? That certainly is a first time we heard that (or even thought of that). Members of a meth ring got busted this week, nothing new there. The proceeds of the drug sales were invested into 100 boxes of first-edition collectible comic books. Investigators say one title alone is worth $3,500 and the [...]

What better way to understand how criminals work than to have a honest chat with them? Small problem; not a lot of people with that shady profession will share intimate details on how they run their businesses. Every now and then we hear it from the horse’s mouth, whether it is through an interview, confession, [...]

The Daily Telegraph (DT) cited from a British confidential report on the situation in Afghanistan. The growing opium will prolong the Taliban insurgency and therefor the deployment of troops. Although publically he is widely supported, doubts are growing whether president Karzai really is in control. DT reported that Karzai does not take up arms against [...]

Another high profile murder in Mexico. Politicians, police chiefs and officers; drug gangs kill whoever threats them in Mexico. Today a mayor in Western Mexico was shot to death. President Calderon’s crackdown on drug gangs has resulted in massive bloodshed. This year, according to NY Times estimates, more than 1.400 people have been killed in [...]