Thread: U.S. agents catching cash at border

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U.S. agents catching cash at border
Officials intercept currency heading south after narcotics go north



09:56 PM CST on Friday, January 20, 2006
By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News


LAREDO – For Mexican smuggling organizations, the border is a two-way street. Drugs, people and other contraband move north. The money moves south.

In the last three years, customs agents have seized more than $20 million in currency at the eight ports of entry from Brownsville to Del Rio – roughly one-fifth of the value of the bulk cash seizures the agency made nationally.

While U.S. drug agents have long concentrated their efforts on stopping drugs at the border, they're increasingly going after the money, hitting the drug cartels in the pocketbook and providing invaluable intelligence of the trafficking networks. And with stricter controls on bank accounts and wire transfers, trafficking organizations are running piles of cash into Mexico, in cars, trucks, boats, and airplanes and even strapped to the bodies of couriers, federal officials said.

"We're seeing bigger amounts of cash coming across, and we're seeing deeper concealment," said Hector Mancha, assistant port director for security at Laredo. "They don't just throw it in a bag in the trunk of their car anymore."

In just one hit in February, agents at Laredo found $1.2 million in $20s, $50s and $100s stashed in the rear quarter panel of a 2003 Honda Accord.

And Sunday, at the international bridge in Hidalgo 150 miles downriver, three women were charged with bulk currency smuggling when officers found $55,940 in cash hidden in bundles underneath clothing and wrapped in white plastic bags in the back of their 1995 Mercury Villager. They were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"It's never a dull moment on the border," said Mark Pacheco, Customs and Border Protection's assistant port director for tactical operations at Laredo. "There are days it seems almost impossible. But then you find that hidden compartment filled with cash, you get pretty excited. You know that's going to hurt the bad guys."


Crimes of cash

Although it's not a crime to carry any amount of cash across the border, it is a federal offense not to declare any amount over $10,000 or conceal it from agents as you enter or leave the country. If the proceeds are determined to stem from illegal activity, charges of bulk currency smuggling can lead to a prison sentence.

Customs agents, Drug Enforcement Administration agents and the FBI are cracking down on currency smuggling as a way to attack the Mexican trafficking organizations, some of which have roots in Dallas and other Texas cities.

In a Jan. 11 national money laundering threat assessment, officials cited an increase in the movement of bulk cash south across the border. It was the first multi-agency analysis of methods that drug traffickers use to disguise their profits.

DEA Administrator Karen Tandy, during a Senate hearing on narcotics control last March, called tracking the money the key to controlling the $65 billion a year trade in illegal drugs.

"To make a significant impact on the drug trade in America and around the world, there is no strategy more effective than following the money back to the sources of drug supply and taking away the dirty proceeds of that trade," she said. "But our efforts to date clearly have not successfully done the job."

Total seizures – which include all assets and can be in the form of cash, houses, guns and vehicles – amounted to well short of $1 billion, Ms. Tandy said.

"Drug traffickers pay more than that each year in fees to launder their ill-gotten gains," she said. Officials said there is no established formula to determine what percentage of cash gets across the border successfully.

Homeland Security's investigation arm, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has taken a lead role in the escalating hunt for trafficking organizations' money.

Since it was created in 2003, ICE arrests in financial investigations increased from 1,224 that year to 1,567 in fiscal year 2005. Nationally, ICE agents have seized more than $477 million in trafficking assets over the last three years, with $100 million of that in bulk currency. The seized cash goes into a fund to buy equipment and to be given in grants to local law enforcement, officials said.

In South Texas, ICE investigators participate in multi-agency investigations that target the choke points for the movement of money southward: bus stations, trucking firms and what investigators call the money services businesses – wire transfer offices and "casas de cambio" or currency exchange houses.

"We don't depend on one strategy," said Jerry Robinette, deputy special agent-in-charge of the San Antonio ICE office. "We don't look just at bulk currency but all the ways that money can move into the pipeline south.

The last stop for federal investigators is the border.

In Texas, customs officers have found currency "in car speakers, engine manifolds, boxes of detergent and any number of false compartments in vehicles," said Donna De La Torre, customs director of field operations at Laredo.

"The smugglers are limited only by their creativity on how they will smuggle cash across the border," said Ms. De La Torre. "Often, the way they brought the drugs in are used to carry the cash back."

She said officers at ports of entry go through an eight-day school on how to conduct outbound inspections and act as "human lie detectors."

Still, much of what they do, she said, "stems from years of experience in studying people as they cross the bridge."


Walking cash register

Over the Christmas holidays, when cross-border traffic swells, customs inspectors searched a 51-year-old man as he attempted to walk into Mexico, one of the 12,000 daily pedestrians who cross at Laredo.

Officers found more than $55,000 in cash taped in packets around his body.

U.S. searches of outbound traffic are a fairly new phenomenon along the border. Sporadically, officers will stop southbound drivers to ask if they have cash in excess of $10,000 to declare. Who gets picked for a closer look depends on a number of factors, Officer Pacheco said.

"We look at the drivers, at their demeanor, when we ask them questions about undeclared currency. And we look at the vehicles to see if anything seems out of the ordinary," he said.

It's also a matter of timing.

"We try to be unpredictable," he said. "We want to keep the smugglers off-balance. But they follow us pretty closely."

Customs officers said that spotters for the traffickers keep a close watch on the border crossings. Armed with cellphones or two-way radios, traffickers can signal northbound drug shipments and southbound cash deliveries where and when border enforcement has tightened.

Once picked for secondary inspection, baggage and personal items in the car are removed and searched. Specially trained "currency dogs" are brought in to see if they pick up the scent of cold cash. Officers check door panels, fenders, the trunk, under the hood and under the car. If something triggers a deeper suspicion, they bring out the high-tech gear, such as portable X-ray machines and fiber-optic cameras.

"There is no formula for who smuggles the cash," Officer Pacheco said. "We've caught young men and grandmas and mothers with kids in the car. They drive up in old beat-up trucks and Volvo SUVs. Every case is different."

Most are mules or couriers hired by the traffickers to drive the cash out of the United States. On rare occasions, those carrying hidden cash may be doing so for innocent reasons.

"We'll try to mitigate the cases of people who were just trying to take money home to Mexico," Officer Pacheco said. Those cases may be assessed a fine for failure to declare the money and be sent on their way."

On Thursday, Laredo customs officers found a man attempting to carry $25,000 in U.S. currency into Mexico in a duffel bag in his truck. Although the man initially raised suspicions, officials released him with a $1,000 fine for failure to disclose the cash. It was believed he was carrying the money home to his family.

That, said Officer Pacheco, is an increasingly rare occurrence.

E-mail dmclemore@dallasnews.com

Besides the drug money, are US companies also paying the illegal alien smugglers?