Money laundering is the routing of illegal profits from bank to bank to disguise its existence. The illegal profits are usually made through activities such as drug trafficking, prostitution rings, illegal arms sales, and various other things. Unfortunately money laundering is a serious crime that is still prevalent in the United States and other countries. The Russian mafia, the Triad or Chinese mafia, and the Columbian drug cartel are just a few of the groups that partake in money laundering. No one knows exactly how much money is laundered yearly but it is estimated to be about $100 billion in the United States. The United States is not the only country affected by these numbers. The estimated amount of …show more content…
Most of the money laundered today is done by some sort of organized crime, whether it is a drug cartel, illegal arms sale, smuggling, prostitution rings, the Mafia, or corporations. Organized crime has existed in the United States for many years. Some of the organized crime groups known for money laundering are: the Russian Mafia, the Triad, other wise known as the Chinese Mafia and the Yakuza. All of these groups are known for a variety of illegal activities that involve receiving substantially high profits. Some of these activities may include drug trafficking, illegal arms sale, and various other things. Recently law enforcement has discovered that corporations have been helpers in laundering money. This discovery leads back to the Black Market Peso Exchange. These corporations do not have a direct involvement with the laundering, but are a helping hand at times. Many times corporations are the supplier of goods for the broker. The perks that go along with being the supplier entail getting an exchange rate better than the market. An example of this is if a corporation has pesos that they need to exchange back into dollars, and the exchange rate is 1,000 pesos for 1 U.S. dollar, the broker may discount the rate to 880 pesos for 1 U. S. dollar.
The initial stage occurs when a criminal, or a group of criminals, involved in an illegal activity make a substantial sum of money. The money is then put into the
White Collar crime is not a crime unto it self, but instead a criteria that has to be met in order for a crime to be considered as White- Collar Crime; (Blount, 2002) hence the reason why Corporate Crime is also considered as White- Collar Crime. At the same time, White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime can be seen as distinct criminological categories, however, in order to reveal this, this essay will firstly be exploring Sutherland's definition of white collar crime and the perplexity with this definition of white-collar crime. It will then be looking at the modification which had to take place with Sutherland's definition of white-collar crime in order to established a distinction between white-collar and corporate crime.
ranging from skimming to hacking into some ones iCloud. We will also be giving examples of to
Money Laundering is the act of placing illegally acquired money in a legitimate business cash flow. This is done in order to be able to use that currency without law enforcement and the IRS questioning cash flow pertaining to a certain individual or corporation in question. This also considered a form of
Organized crime can be narrowed down to five unique areas of criminal activity. The first being racketeering, an umbrella term, meant to describe when any group or groups conduct one or more of the other criminal activities. One of the most successful ways the federal government has been able to hinder the actions of hardcore criminals is through the formation of the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations). The second area of major criminal activity is vice, or vice operations. This has to do with victim-less crimes such as drugs, gambling, and prostitution. Again, these crimes are highly problematic because it is the public that decides whether or not they prosper. It’s all too easy to build a case against someone breaking a law by importing huge quantities of controlled substances across a border, but it becomes much more difficult to stem the sale or need for such drugs once they have reached their intended destinations.
Drug trafficking is something that is hard for law enforcement to keep up with. The federal government has developed agencies in order to combat this problem. “The primary agencies involved in drug interdiction include the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Military” (Levinthal, C.F., 2012, p. 120). The DEA is responsible for enforcing illicit drugs laws and regulations. And bringing to justice any person or group that has any part in engineering, delivery or growing of an illicit drug with the intent to sale. The DEA are sometimes work undercover and are frequently out of the country conducting investigations with foreign leadership. The U.S. Custom and Border Protection
The most activity that these cartels do is around the United States and Mexican border by transporting illegal substances and even people and putting many people in danger not just in Mexico but in the United States. But also the economy is being hurt because the United States losing about one point six million dollars annually to these cartels contributing to smuggling and the U.S is number drug using country all around the world. While more and more smuggling is happening cartel kingpin for example Joaquin Guzman is getting more powerful and being the number one supplier to Chicago that most of these narcotics are being distributed. Statistics of that came from the DEA reports that cartel presence in the United States cities are getting bigger from the years of two-thousand-eight to twenty-eleven climbing the scale to twelve hundred on the number of reports from American communities that suspected narcotics presence. Making the struggle to make communities more secure but organizations that are not affiliated to the government are helping to get rid all this problematic situations with cartels such as the Chicago Crime
millions of dollars of structured settlements at a discounted price so that he could generate
When criminals reach this stage, it becomes arduous for investigators to distinguish if the funds are licit or not ( Grosse, 4 ). One of the most famous money laundering scandals in America was the Bank of New York money laundering scandal with Russia. In the summer of 1999, The Bank of New York found themselves in a predicament when they were found as suspects of an international money laundering scandal. The bank laundered billions of dollars to the Russian mafia and Russian politics. In august later that year, the New York Times published their calculations that the bank laundered nearly $14.2 billion dollars to $10 billion dollars that was laundered from Russia passed through the Bank of New York (Block, 3).
Has one ever wondered how a criminal can enjoy his profit without being exposed? If a criminal wants to enjoy his money successfully, he knows he has to hide the true proceeding of his wealth. Since there are criminals doing misdeeds for a financial motive, there has been ways to disguise the real origins of the profits. It was not until the 20 century when a formal term was imposed to this act. Even though the famous Al Capone was incarcerated because of tax evasion (actually considered as money laundering charges, too), he needed to make his money seems as legal money so the police won’t have any reason to suspect him. However, the situation for money launderers is not the same as Al Capone’s. If Al Capone was alive, he would need a
Most people, when they hear the word “crime,” think about street crime or violent crime such as murder, rape, theft, or drugs. However, there is another type of crime that has cost people their life savings, investors’ billions of dollars, and has had significant impacts of multiple lives; it is called white collar crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines white collar crime as
Madinger (2011) Argued that Civil asset forfeiture is the driving force behind money-laundering today is forfeiture.
Organized crime is a major problem around the world and only grows larger as time goes on. They increase in size and influence daily and become more of a threat to anyone who has the displeasure of interacting with them. These gangs, as they’re often called, deal in weapons, drugs, and human trafficking, selling means to kill people, ruin their lives, or just plainly sell people. Unfortunately actions such as these are commonplace nowadays among gangs as they become more and more ruthless. We need to rid ourselves of gangs, that much is clear. However, nowadays we’re not in a position to do so. Everyone in the country needs to understand the dangers of gangs and how they can grow anywhere despite law enforcement. Because it’s not the police that can do away with gangs for good, it’s the citizen 's’ responsibility to ensure these gangs never grow and prosper.
Money laundering is connected to drug trafficking because the individuals who are handling the drugs do not want to get caught, therefore attempt to move their funds into an actual business to seem legitimate (Abadinsky, 2014). Since the money drug traffickers generate through sales is technically illegal money, they turn to money laundering to protect the revenue (Abadinsky, 2014). “Money is laundered through currency exchange houses, stock brokerage houses, gold dealers, casinos, automobile dealerships, insurance companies, and trading companies” and much more (Abadinsky, 2014, p. 252). When money from drug trafficking is placed in
In this paper the exciting criminal phenomenon known as white-collar crime will be discussed. Corporate Crime and Computer Crime will be discussed in detail. Crime preventative agencies such as the NCPC (National Crime Prevention Council) will also be researched. White Collar Crime The late Professor Edwin Sutherland coined the term white-collar crime about 1941. Sutherland defined white-collar crime as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation" (Siegel 337) White-collar crime includes, by way of example, such acts as promulgating false or misleading advertising, illegal exploitation of employees, mislabeling of goods, violation of weights and measures statutes, conspiring to
They also increase the drug trafficking and pay off corrupt officials by extortion or intimidation which helps them continue their operations. Although the FBI is unsure of how much impact there is, they estimate it to be around $1 trillion a year, globally.