> ...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 to wear...
I'm utterly baffled at why a money smuggling operation would be done with a conspicuous 5 to 8 suitcases at a time, rather than just 1 or 2.
They were offered "around $3,750" to fly suitcases containing around $500,000 each. Which is not a high percentage even for just a single suitcase.
So even besides the extra risk of attracting attention from so many suitcases, you'd think they'd want to spread them out more just for risk reduction generally -- in case the checked luggage is lost, in case a courier decides to abscond with the cash themselves, etc.
From the fraud cases I've worked on, greed does factor in and you can often see a point in time within the data where it seems like they realize they are 'getting away with it'.
My best guess is a lack of willing participants combined with pressure from up top to move money to keep the operation going/meet targets.
We also don't know how much of that 500k is profit - maybe the margins in organised crime aren't what they used to be. Each $3,750 saved is money they can put straight into their pocket as their boss might never find out how many mules they ended up using.
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.
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.
People on minimum wage don’t get a chance to build savings are probably living month to month. Though it’s not an earth shattering of money it is meaningful to a lot of people.
I remember some very sad news about a drug smuggler, a poor woman from the Philippines, condemned to an insanely harsh sentence in Singapore (perhaps even death penalty?). At least, the UK justice system should be less cruel.
In money laundering there is generally a problem of too much money and a chain of people too dangerous to say no to. This leads to stupid mistakes like this.
If you assume that there's an even chance of getting caught (e.g., if searches are random based on the traveler) then fewer larger trips reduces the number of times your agent is caught.
Given that it seems reasonable to assume risk is correlated to the number of people caught rather than the amount of money caught (which is the same either way) it seems like fewer largers trips could be rational.
I guess the more trips you make the more people you have to involve as well. If you have 1 person make 10 trips a year that's a lot easier to hide than 10 people making 10 trips a year etc.,
> If you assume that there's an even chance of getting caught (e.g., if searches are random based on the traveler) then fewer larger trips reduces the number of times your agent is caught.
Let's say you have 100 trips to send money vs 1 trip. If there's a 10% chance to be caught on each trip, then with 100 trips 10 people are caught on average, whereas with 1 trip a tenth of a person is caught on average (more realistically, I'd look at the probably that more than N people are caught using a binomial, but I don't thinks it's important).
Although that said, maybe it's worth it. With a 1% chance to be caught and 100 trips, there's a 63% chance at least one person is caught, and a 26% chance that more than 1 person is caught. With one person, there's a 1% chance they're caught.
The average money caught is the same though (and as you note the variance in money caught is higher, which is undesirable).
But money caught doesn't land you in jail. You could imagine that with multiple people caught it's easier to track back who they met with. With 1 person caught, there's no other cases to cross reference against.
Probably you would want to balance these factors out.
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.
The mules generally don’t know that they are moving this much money. I think the risk of them running off with the cash would be quite high.
I think the high number of suitcases is simply because it went well with two, and the organizers saw how many people actually bring a lot of suitcases, so they kept upping the number every time they made a successful move.
Article is paywalled, but the headline says billions (10^8) and a suitcase has hundred thousands (10^5), and therefore we might be talking of around 10^3 suitcases. I can see why a 4x increase in the number of trips might be operationally significant. They might even be doing a trial run of 5 suitcases to check if they can make that their usual mode of operation since it'd be a substantial cost reduction.
> They were offered "around $3,750" to fly suitcases containing around $500,000 each. Which is not a high percentage even for just a single suitcase.
Couriers aren't really the value-add part of the operation, so this makes sense to me. Nearly nobody gets paid as a % of the value they are handling. A legal operation could move this for an order of magnitude less so there is actually a hefty premium here.
> Most airports worldwide, including in the U.S., don’t scan passenger luggage for cash, a costly undertaking in equipment and personnel.
This is the only shocker for me. Can anyone elaborate? I've always assumed x-ray scanners can't figure out the amount of cash, but shouldn't they be able to detect giant stacks of cash?
Customs can certainly approach you any time right up to the gate. In 2010, my wife and I were approached by an agent and asked very directly if we had more than $10,000 in USD cash with us as we waited at the gate to board a nonstop flight from the US to Moscow. We answered truthfully "no" in a brief conversation and he wished us well almost immediately.
I don't think he suspected we were money launderers. My guess is that upon hearing both of us speak, he easily determined that we were not natives of Russia and thus not, for example, carrying but not declaring a substantial amount of cash intended for family back home.
> 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 airports will be expensive. Smaller airports in Britain are already running at a tiny fraction of their capacity, with only London, Manchester and Edinburgh operating any serious services. A particularly striking example is Cardiff Airport: it can accommodate A380s, but you'll have to be patient if you want to spot a widebody airliner there. It's not really worth the extra equipment and staff to search for money laundering in these quieter airports, and the costs would probably force them to shut down entirely if not funded by the taxpayer.
This situation of reduced capacity is not entirely theoretical, either. Before boarding Eurostar railway services through the Channel Tunnel, passengers have to go through security which includes passport control, customs and X-Ray (for luggage) and millimetre band scanners (for passengers). The introduction of these checks reduced capacity by a third, meaning that the Eurostar trains run with empty seats, when other trains running domestic services on the very same line can be crowded. It's about to get even worse now that Britain and the EU are introducing incompatible facial recognition systems that gate the entrances.
As you can tell, I'm rather passionate about this issue :) I just think it's important that borders don't become the de-facto location on which all types of law enforcement converge, and for border security to be so entirely out of proportion with domestic policing.
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.
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 here that some places do mix the duties - the airport security guys at Schipol will make a vague effort to stop you from taking a big bag of weed through, and will politely take it off your hands.
This is correct. A friend of ours works at TSA. They saw a sealed envelope that looked like a large amount of cash. Questioned the passenger, he answered “well”, but wasn’t a security threat so they let him through and called the correct authority at his domestic destination.
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
Of course, this information is going to be interesting to the police. So if they are the proceeds of crime, it will probably help get you caught.
It's not really any different from banks reporting every deposit of $10K or over. The government wants to track all large transfers of money both in bank accounts and across borders, so that it can identify money flows that are not being reported to the IRS and/or are the proceeds of criminal activity.
for sure, I was thinking from the narrower government perspective rather than the larger "is this the right thing to do" view and appreciate the reminder to keep things in context
That's how it worked from experience and stories from friends. TSA is searching your bag for security things, not trying to find drugs. If they find it, might toss it, might ignore it, but they are not directly a police agency, they dgaf.
Nobody says you can't, carrying whatever amount across the border is perfectly legal. What's illegal is trying to carry >10k without declaring it to the customs.
If you're a law abiding citizen, why wouldn't you declare it? If you don't, well congrats, you're no longer a law abiding citizen.
Whether or not our citizens should have the right to do something seems rarely related to whether the UK government sticks its noses in our business to make sure we aren't.
In addition, systematic security scans are performed at the departing airport, and it's generally not a crime to export huge amounts of undeclared cash, only to import it.
No, a major part of the article is that the scans are not performed.
And it absolutely is a crime to export huge amounts of undeclared cash. Again, a major part of the article.
Think about it -- if large amounts of undeclared cash are being exported, then they're probably both criminal proceeds and haven't had taxes paid on them. And the government wants to stop both.
It's actually the government on the import side that may be less interested. As in this very article. Governments are less likely to be complaining about money coming in.
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 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.
> 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)
I concur, any person putting cash or anything of value inside of a suitcase at an airport and then checking that in (i.e. not carrying it with them), is just asking for trouble. I'm surprised any of the money arrived at the destination, because in the US all of that money would have been stolen by the baggage handlers in the holding area before getting routed to the actual airplane.
I think the oft-cited solution to this if you're flying domestically in the US is to pack a flare gun, declare it, and use a non-TSA lock on the suitcase. Apparently, this also greatly reduces the chance of your checked baggage getting lost or misrouted.
How dare you question the TSA, the best and brightest of us. \s
As a funny counter, I recently traveled through 6 TSA checkpoints with a loaded magazine in my bag. I had it from when I was at my farm, oops. Was a little concerned because I was in Boston when they found it (I’m based out of Tennessee). But they let me go and confiscated it.
Point being, if they can’t find a loaded magazine, I doubt they’d be able to find money intentionally. Then again, might have more incentive to find the money
1. You’re technically allowed to travel through anywhere with any firearms in the US (I only had a magazine, not a firearm) legally. That includes planes, but you have to check the bags. That said, they can still arrest you and not follow the law.
2. I carry a conceal carry permit with reciprocity with most states for this very reason. I actually showed it to them and it made things much smoother
You got really lucky! In MA possession of ammunition without a (MA issued) permit is a crime with up to 2 years in jail.
MA doesn't have ANY reciprocity with other states regarding your CCW and the City of Boston in particular has a ban on any high-capacity (>10 rounds) magazines of ANY sort/age. MA banned hi-capacity mags but only ones made after 1994, pre-ban ones are ok, just not in Boston (and I think a few other towns).
You are right about peaceable journey, but I would not risk any of my liberty or rights on the good nature of a LEO in such a state.
Boston, along with many Democrat strongholds in America, is strongly in favor of disarming the public, including law abiding citizens. The fact that this is normalized, including confiscation from a law abiding citizen, is absurd. There is an important legal document which states: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Nevermind the fact that legal gun owners and especially CHP holders are responsible for approximately zero crime.
I believe you are mistaken, as so very many people are, about that document. If you are quoting an important legal document, it's important, wouldn't you agree, to get the exact text correct, otherwise the meaning might change? Especially if the text is used for justification to allow a wide, practically unregulated population to be armed? Let's see, I am willing to bet the following statement is the actual quote from the document you reference, which says something quite different (to me). Here it is: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." nevermind that the more legal gun holders there are, the more opportunities for criminals to get guns. Legal gun owners routinely do not secure their weapons in the manner prescribed for responsible gun ownership(I grew up in the south, I can count the number of gun safes I've seen in houses on 1 hand). In fact, many decry the safeguards as imperiling their lives should a crisis spontaneously occur. I argue that those individuals are in fact responsible for a non-negligible amount of crime, since their actions (purchasing a firearm and then failing to secure it against threats) directly leads to more gun crime. But undoubtedly these reasonable arguments and facts will do nothing to move your position, so I guess I just wasted both our times.
Your “clarification” was to post a famously ambiguous sentence. It’s trivial to parse that as the militia being regulated, not the “bearing arms” part. Especially since it’s explicitly stating that the right “shall not be infringed”.
Funny that you start with agreeing that the meaning is ambiguous, and then follow up with it being trivial to parse. So what is it? Ambiguous or trivial to parse? I don’t think you can have it both ways.
And further, since it is ambiguous, would it be so difficult for us to come together as a nation and, well, reduce the ambiguity? It's not like the Constitution is a suicide pact, we are allowed to make changes.
TSA agents are federal employees and federal law prohibits carrying-on ammunition on planes. It is not Boston specific other than that's where OP got caught. You can still check it if you want. I assume the reason is to reduce the chances of accidental discharge causing risk to the plane and/or the prevent one part of a weapon that could be used for hijacking. Even if laws allowed you to take bullets into airports, I have no doubt that the airlines (private business people choose to patronize) would prohibit you from carrying ammunition onto their planes and they'd have every right to do so.
About 15 years ago my dad accidentally carried a pocket knife in his carry-on for about half a dozen different business trips before the TSA found it (he had used the same bag for a camping trip a month or two before). That it took so long to find destroyed what little trust we already had that the TSA was any more than security theater.
You're misunderstanding the mechanism of the TSA. How it actually works is that after "terrorists" get all riled up "hating us for our freedom", the experience of having to deal with the diametrically-opposed-to-freedom TSA takes the wind right out of their sails.
I used to frequent a firearms related forum and someone asked if anyone had accidentally travelled with a firearm and there were plenty of stories.
Lots of examples of traveling with ammunition either loose or in magazines and it not being caught on airport x-ray. But also stories of people grabbing something from a carry-on and realizing they forgot their loaded handgun was in there.
Normally it's not that big a deal if you're flying within the US (though NY and NJ can be dicey), but I also recall a story where someone flew international and the destination was a country that would put you in prison for a long time even if you came forward (I think it was Japan or China).
They were asking advice on what to do and I think in the end they unloaded it, took the gun apart (barrel, slide, frame, etc) and dumped each part in a separate trash bin far, far apart.
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.
Starting January 1, 2025, existing companies will need to report beneficial owners to FinCEN, which may start the process of cutting down on shell company abuse. https://www.fincen.gov/boi-faqs#B_2
First, let me be clear that no one (country) wants to slow illicit businesses making inflows (and not committing the crime inside said country). Second, while Delaware offers privacy, you still need to bank (or even crypto) and that requires KYC/AML which really makes Delaware nothing more than a privacy tint.
Finally, I don't think any country/regulator cares about all of that; they are just (in my opinion) using this as a scapegoat to remove cash.
Isn't the privacy tint the meat of laundering? After passing through a couple shells, KYC at that point just knows who made a bunch of income, but not how. What's the rest of the story?
> ...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 to wear...
I'm utterly baffled at why a money smuggling operation would be done with a conspicuous 5 to 8 suitcases at a time, rather than just 1 or 2.
They were offered "around $3,750" to fly suitcases containing around $500,000 each. Which is not a high percentage even for just a single suitcase.
So even besides the extra risk of attracting attention from so many suitcases, you'd think they'd want to spread them out more just for risk reduction generally -- in case the checked luggage is lost, in case a courier decides to abscond with the cash themselves, etc.
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