Meet the New Generation of Professional Money Launderers
The first season of the Netflix series Ozark was riveting and eye opening for most. My wife and I watched the season 1 premier together, expecting something kind of light and funny as the series’ lead was Jason Bateman, he of Horrible Bosses I and II. To our surprise, Ozark was immediately dark, deadly and for most Americans, eye opening. Bateman plays his role as a mild-mannered accountant, husband and father with a psychotic bent perfectly. The viewer is conditioned by Bateman into thinking this is another ‘walk in the park’ type of show, that is, until all of his business partners get murdered in front of him by a Mexican cartel.
In Chicago.
They were normal, everyday American CPA’s! One minute they are discussing the weekend and the next they are taking bullets from bad guys. All of them die, except for Bateman’s character. In a span of minutes he goes from a witness and potential murder victim to taking over the cartel’s laundering operations for his dead friends. He sets up shop in the Ozarks with his family after the murders, right in the heartland of America, with a promise to the cartel to launder $500 million in five years. Or he and his family get whacked.
What’s unique about Ozark, beyond the violence and the constant duality faced by Bateman’s character, is the fact that it reveals the new generation of money launderer — professional Americans working for the Mexican drug cartel within the borders of the United States. By professional, I mean those Americans who, for example, went to college and earned an accounting degree, a law degree, or marketing degree. They are not typically the subset of the population that we think of when it comes to criminal behavior, especially when that behavior is paid for by a drug cartel based in another country. Your neighbor in Denver or Kansas City could be a lawyer for the Jalisco Cartel (CJNG) and you would have no clue, until one day their house suddenly blows up.
Bateman’s character, Marty Byrde, is a great example of the world’s new generation of professional money launderers in that he doesn’t seem like a criminal. He’s got credentials behind his name! Perhaps a paradigm shift is afoot? Byrde is a bit low tech, but him having the guts to take on a gig that seems akin to risking espionage by representing a dangerous, foreign interest shows that college-educated, blue blood Americans are ready to risk it all for the ‘American Dream’ of wealth. What makes the risk seem low, from their perspective, is the fact that they are kept in a silo and have no real knowledge of the crimes committed by their bosses.
According to David Olesky, section chief for financial investigations at the DEA, in an interview with ACAMS Moneylaunering.com:
“Many of the individuals, businesses and networks involved in the money-laundering process are walled off from the underlying drug-trafficking activity. Oftentimes, those entities are unwittingly moving money for CJNG for one transaction, while simultaneously engaging in a transaction for a Colombian drug-trafficking organization.”
In essence, the cartels have become more sophisticated in their worldwide business operations. They are actively recruiting Americans who understand law, taxes, finance and politics become professional money launderers on their behalf and some Americans are going along with it, assuming a big pay day, while also assuming most of the legal risk.
Sure, there are technology trends and tactics that a new generation of money launderers are using, and we will cover those in a future post, but at the moment the biggest trend in money laundering is the creation of a generation of professional money launderers who were born in America and who know best how to exploit her, but who are also putting themselves and their families in immediate danger. Ozark is everywhere.
-end-
