Thread: Human-smuggling rings change tactics

Published: 07.14.2008
Human-smuggling rings change tactics
SEAN HOLSTEGE
The Arizona Republic
Mexican human-smuggling rings are sidestepping Arizona's campaign to choke off their pipeline of illegal cash as they collect billions of dollars for sneaking illegal immigrants into the state.
Arizona investigators crack down and the smugglers counter, shifting where and how they collect payments from illegal immigrants. The two sides repeat their sparring, like two grand masters mapping out their paths on a chessboard.
The cartels' shifting tactics show how the smuggling of people increasingly has become an organized business. Typically, a Mexican immigrant pays a smuggler $1,500 to $2,000 in fees, paying a portion up front to reach and then cross the Mexico border. Then a coyote takes the immigrant to a drop house in Phoenix and holds him or her hostage until the final balance is wired from a friend or relative in the U.S.
Arizona investigators targeted payments wired to Western Union stores in the state and seized millions of dollars. But since then the smugglers have begun having the money transmitted to certain Western Union operations in other states and Mexico. They also launder the cash through quickly closed checking accounts at large commercial banks and ferry bags of cash south across the border.
One way or another, at least $1.7 billion a year flows to Arizona's drop house rings, federal and state investigators estimate. The money sustains illegal immigration, a big business characterized by gunbattles among smugglers and attacks upon immigrants. Every few months coyotes kill an immigrant.
The money maneuvers have frustrated Arizona investigators. Focusing on unscrupulous Western Union outlets, they had slashed wire transfers to smugglers from a peak of $500 million in 2002 to less than $50 million in 2006.
Western Union says it does everything it can to help. The company monitors its business thoroughly for money laundering and reports any problems to authorities, said Joseph Cachey III, the company's vice president for global compliance.
"We try to run a national anti-money-laundering program, and we feel it is significant and thorough," Cachey said.
The state continues to chisel away at the smugglers' network. Earlier this month, an Arizona Court of Appeals ruling allowed state investigators to open a new front in their campaign: sifting and seizing certain Western Union transactions to Sonora. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard hailed the ruling as "very important."
But he admits it's not enough. Arizona stands alone in combating illegal profits from smugglers. No other state, nor any federal agency, has systematically targeted coyote money. Goddard has asked other border states to copy Arizona's campaign, but none has.
He is urging Mexican authorities to clamp down on smugglers and unscrupulous Western Union operators in Sonora, but it's unknown how far cooperation will go.
Targeting the cash
Arizona's crackdown began in 2001, when undercover agents watched coyotes walk out of Western Union outlets in the state with tens of thousands of dollars in cash. Often, they didn't bring valid ID to get cash and picked up payments wired to dozens of illegal immigrants.
As investigators tightened the net, coyotes starting bringing illegal immigrants to some Western Union shops to sign for the cash in smaller amounts. Store clerks took bribes and kept loose records, investigators testified.
Over the next five years, investigators tracked wired money and chased the evidence that emerged. Detectives pieced together a picture of drop houses, coyotes and smuggling rings. They collected troves of smuggling lists, interrogated thousands of immigrants and coyotes and conducted undercover stings of coyotes and Western Union outlets in Arizona. All the evidence pointed in the same direction: Vast amounts were being laundered.
The effort led to the largest money-laundering case of its kind. In January a grand jury indicted Bruce Dennis Love, a Phoenix-area Western Union franchisee, on money-laundering and other charges. Love has not entered a plea, pending a ruling on whether he is mentally competent to stand trial.
Statewide, about 5 percent of Western Union outlets were responsible for 80 percent of the most suspicious transactions, investigators with the state financial-crimes task force said. Transaction records and follow-up investigations show that two- to three-dozen stores depended on the coyote business.
Sonoran connection
In spring 2006, state investigators studied a two-month sample of Western Union transfers from U.S. states to Sonora. They counted $28 million from the same 28 states that had previously wired money to coyotes in Arizona. Money went to Sonora from the same places, in the same amounts and proportions as they had in Arizona.
The transfers showed that families in, say, New York or Atlanta paid Arizona coyotes the way they always had but sent the money farther south.
Further evidence included:
• Most transactions were posted in a handful of small smuggling towns, such as Caborca, Altar and Cananea. A few individuals picked up thousands of dollars in multiple transactions every day. One man picked up $194,000 in two months.
• Money transmissions to Sonoran Western Union outlets fluctuated with the smuggling season, spiking in spring and late fall, just as they had in Arizona.
• Sonora, a smuggling haven for decades, has 100 Western Union outlets, more than Mexico City, which is four times as populous. Investigators said the imbalance showed Sonoran stores were collecting coyote money rather than legal remittances.
• In one case, investigators used logbook notes and transaction records to link the slaying of an immigrant in a Phoenix drop house to a Western Union branch in Caborca. He was shot in the head, testicles and midriff while complaining on the phone to his brother about being extorted.
The Caborca branch sits at the back of a store that sells appliances and motorcycles. Investigators said it cleared 20 times the amount as the next busiest Western Union in Sonora.
Later in 2006, Arizona investigators got a warrant to seize suspicious transactions from U.S. states to Sonora.
Western Union filed an emergency motion in court to halt the seizures, arguing that such a data search would be too broad and interfere with the privacy of people who legitimately wire money.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge agreed, but on July 1 the state Court of Appeals overturned the ruling, saying Arizona could search the data and intercept suspicious transactions. The court said the evidence linked the money in Sonora to crimes in Arizona. Western Union has not said whether it will appeal.
Western Union said it has been cooperative in cracking down on money laundering.
Goddard and state investigators take a dimmer view of Western Union's role.
"It is troubling to me that a major commercial enterprise can facilitate criminal activity the way the money transmitters do," Goddard said. "A greater effort is needed from them to clear up their activities. I've been angry for the last four years."
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/local/90846.php

How about this.....duh....

ICE, stop publishing your tactics in the evening news. Don't you think the smugglers are reading them to figure out the game plan? Duh....

Or how about building a wall....duh #2

Duplicate Post Original at

http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-123245-0.html