How Drug Cartels Move Cash Across The U.S.-Mexico Border


By Michel Marizco

May 23, 2011


The cartels make billions of dollars on the drug trade. But they have to work out complicated schemes to get those dollars they make from addicts in the United States back into Mexico and convert them into usable pesos.

It's a lot of money. And money can overcome lots of challenges.

A recent investigation by U.S. authorities found that between 2004 and 2007, one large U.S. bank allowed nearly $500 billion of drug money to be wired through its systems, no questions asked.

Many of the wire transfers ended up in Culiacán, Sinaloa, the place to go to cash out American greenbacks for pesos in Mexico's organized crime capital. Experts describe it as a violent city along the Pacific Coast with a long history of drug trafficking.

Parasols line the streets of El Mercadito, the little market. The setup is the same at nearly every parasol. A woman sits in its shade, surrounded by 2 or 3 young, well built men.

A car approaches. Somebody was paid in American dollars and needs to convert that to Mexican pesos but doesn't want to report where the money came from. A negotiation. Then the cash transaction and money exchangers simply walks the dollars over to the money exchange house – “casas de cambiaâ€