Microstructuring still a crime

[NajdorfDefense]

'ATMs Become Handy Tool For Laundering Dirty Cash
With Small Deposits, Couriers Outwit Banks; Bag of Money in Queens

By MARK SCHOOFS
September 21, 2007

At 8:50 a.m. on March 15, 2006, Luis Saavedra and Carlos Roca began going from bank to bank in Queens, New York, depositing cash into accounts held by a network of other people, according to law-enforcement officials. Their deposits never exceeded $2,000. Most ranged from $500 to $1,500.
[Luis Saavedra]

Around lunchtime, they crossed into Manhattan and worked their way up Third Avenue, then visited two banks on Madison Avenue. By 2:52 p.m., they had placed more than $111,000 into 112 accounts, say the officials, who reconstructed their movements from seized deposit slips.

Confederates in Colombia used ATM cards to withdraw the money in pesos, moving quickly from machine to machine in a withdrawal whirlwind, the officials say. "The organization at its height was moving about $2 million a month," estimates Bridget Brennan, Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City.

Messrs. Saavedra and Roca were arrested in June and charged under state money-laundering laws. Officials say they were moving money for a Colombian drug-trafficking organization that sells cocaine and the club-drug Ecstasy. Prosecutors say the two men engaged in a laundering practice called "microstructuring," a scheme notable for its simplicity. To evade suspicion by banks, they always made small deposits. In Colombia, getting at that money was as easy as pushing buttons on an ATM.

Microstructuring has emerged as a vexing challenge for law-enforcement officials charged with stanching the illegal movement of money by drug traffickers, terrorists and organized-crime rings. The deposits and withdrawals are so small they can pass for ordinary ATM transactions. It's an extreme variation of a practice sometimes called "smurfing" -- the breaking down of large transactions into many smaller ones to evade detection by financial regulators. That activity was criminalized by Congress in 1986.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1190...hps_us_pageone

[Jeff_B]

wtf? everyone knows they best way to launder money is online poker.

agreed