July 22, 2016 • 48 mins
In the conclusion of their two part interview with Robert Mazur, the guys explore the ins and outs of money laundering. Tune in to learn how dirty money gets clean - and what happens (or doesn't happen) to the bad guys when they're caught.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
(00:21):
name is no and I am Ben you are you
don't call it a comeback, ladies and gentlemen, but wait,
can we get a slam on the brakes? Noise and
no perfect You can in fact call this a comeback
because this is part two of our interview with Robert
Maser in our previous episode, which we do recommend you
(00:43):
listen to before listening to this if you if you
haven't yet, go ahead and stop this listen to part one.
We'll be here. And in this episode we're going to
focus on money laundering. In the previous episode it was
all about the operations, and this one it's what's happened
right now. Are there still banks out there that are
taking money from drug cartels and somehow funneling funneling them
(01:06):
through banks in in Europe and other places and then
getting money that they can use just out in the open.
And not to mention, I mean, so much of what
is going on now um has been built off of
the work that Mr Maser did in terms of exposing
some of these techniques that the banks used that we
will talk about in much more detail in this part
(01:27):
of the interview. Um, so you could kind of look
at part one is sort of a history and this
part two being sort of more of a of a
present and moving forward kind of perspective on where we
are now and where all of this insane undercover work
that Mr Maser did has led us to spot on.
So first, let's take a little bit of a closer
(01:49):
look at what money laundering actually is. There's a great
article on it at our parent website, How Stuff Works.
I know that side, Yes, yes, I would hope that
we are the three of us are familiar with that side.
We hope you are, two ladies and gentlemen. In the
article how Money Laundering Works. The author here, let's see,
(02:10):
the author is Julia Layton, and you always know it's
going to be a good article if Julia is writing
the The author explains money laundering in in this way. First,
it's very common. Money laundering happens in almost every country
in the world. Second, there are numerous avenues of money laundering. Right,
so one scheme, for instance, typically involved transferring money through
(02:32):
several different countries to obscure where it came from. Right,
So we know that a million dollars coming from France
or London or the US is treated with less suspicion
than a million dollars coming from Columbia, for instance, or
a million dollars just appearing in Afghanistan right, or in
(02:56):
the case of the U S Military, millions of dollars
disappe here in somewhere. So at its simplest, it's just
the act of making money that comes from source A
look like it comes from source B. So this is
not the money from a cocaine empire. This is the
money from legitimate yet ridiculously successful series of laundromats or
(03:19):
what's another come on, laundromats for laundering money. Yeah, for me,
it reminds me of the onion router a little bit,
I was gonna say, Or even like a VPN where
it like takes you know, it obscures your location, um
like so that you you can't pin down where the
person that's doing the illegal downloading or whatever it is
(03:40):
actually is and it basically disguises their IP address. That
same thing occurred to me totally. Yeah, or if anything,
it slows the process of tracking it way way down. Right. So,
for fans of the television show Breaking Bad, if we
want to have a pop culture reference in here, for
fans of that show, laser tag right right, Uh there
(04:01):
there are series there's a series of events where in UH,
a group of drug dealers is trying to find the correct,
safest way to launder money. And at the level they
are operating at UH, they are looking for a business
that primarily moves a lot of cash, and so one
of the would be businesses is a laser tag places
(04:23):
Nold points out UH. And then they also eventually settle
on a car wash, another place that usually UH uses
a lot of cash rather than credit or debit cards.
The most common types of criminals who need to launder
money are, of course drug traffickers, right, but they're not
the only people. There are also corrupt politicians, embezzlers, terrorists, yeah,
(04:50):
mobsters who shook some money out of some people, Yeah,
racketeers and then which sounds way more friendly and somehow
like some you know, Yeah, it just makes me think
of a mousketeer. I don't know why it makes anything
or that movie The Rocketeer, Rocketeer. And it also makes
me think of, uh, maybe there's a show in Vegas
(05:11):
that's mafio so only called the Racketeers, and maybe they
on camera shake people down. There's those you know, those
can can dancers at Radio City Music called the Rackets. Yeah,
it's really they're called the rockets already. So did you
(05:31):
already mention white collar like embezzlement like high levels. Yeah,
that's a fantastic point. We touched on that, but let's
go into a little more detail. Well, it seems like
you have to do this if you're siphoning money out
of your the company that you work for, let's say
your high level executive. And we've seen this happen at
several companies H and Ron, a couple others. Um, it
(05:54):
seems like you would want to obscure that money as well.
And they're going to use the same tactics that a
drug Affrica is going to use. Yes, also, one of
my favorites, or at least favorite terms confidence men scammers right,
rip off enthusiasts. So these common then will do the
same thing regardless. What they do is they enter in
(06:16):
this money for perhaps into an offshore account of somewhere,
you know, someplace, and then filter that through a process
called layering. Right, so maybe this goes from the off
shore account, it goes to another offshore accounter, it goes
to account in Europe or account in the US, or
maybe they just buy a boat with this off shore account,
(06:38):
and then it goes into what's called the integration phase,
wherein it goes to maybe the boat and when the
off shores goes to a US account or maybe one
of these secondary accounts in Europe or in the U
S wherever goes into a business investment. So now, uh,
(06:59):
now Mr Barr to be from part one is no
longer a no longer a purveyor of human trafficking spoils.
We get really dark with that one. You have actually
retired that alias and now going by the name Steven Stevenson,
Stephen Stevenson, Okay, cool, uh yeah, alright, Steven Stevenson. It's
(07:20):
a whole new man. And he owns a chain of
blockbusters in Hungary or something, and that's where he makes
all of that's where he has made his millions blockbusters
killing it in Hungry. Right Now, that's one guy. It's
Steve Stevenson magic. Uh So, so we see this pretty simply, right,
(07:40):
uh Sending the money through various financial transactions to change
its form make it difficult to follow. Musilla or Maser
dealt with a lot of this in h in the
course of operations see chase. And then the integration, the
stage where it enters the mainstream economy and it looks legit,
you know, it's a bunch of hung Garrean blockbusters or something.
(08:02):
This this means that you can use the money if
you're a criminal without getting caught at this point, if
you successfully integrate, because it's very very difficult to catch
a launderer during the integration stage if there's no documentation
all the way back to the the original point. You know.
(08:23):
So we mentioned white collar crime, we mentioned drug traffic,
and we mentioned terrorists activities, and we mentioned some of
the methods of of this. Right, I can walk us
through a money laundering thing called smurfing. Sounds grea wait
(08:43):
I remember hearing about this. Smurfing is when you break
up the amount. So you've got a million dollars whatever,
let's say a million dollars, You're gonna break it up
into a bunch of smaller payments of let's say, nine thousand,
nine nine pion dollars, because there's a ten thousand dollar
limit when you're operating in this dark money field, because
(09:08):
if you hit that ten thousand dollars, you're gonna get
pinned no matter where you're trying to move that money. UM.
I tried to move ten thousand dollars of savings one
time when I went to buy I know this is
a personal thing, but when I tried to put a
down payment on my house and it got pains, and
the person told me, well, why don't you break it
up into two payments of five thousand dollars just so
(09:29):
you don't have to go through all the hassle and
for anyone who wants to do that. So at ten
thousand dollars, every US bank has to report any transaction yes,
and and then there's all kinds of paperwork you have
to get into. The smurfs the origin of this name.
The smurfs are the multiple people who deposit these below
(09:50):
ten thousand dollar amounts in different bank accounts, one or
more bank accounts, and some of our audience members who
maybe work in a financial or banking system are familiar
with this, and we would love to hear your stories
if you've met some smurfs. That term is also using
breaking bad again for the folks that would go out
and buy just the legal amount of pseudo epha draine,
(10:11):
which is the precursor for making methamphetamine. And so they
were they were like you would get flagged or you
would not you would have they would report you for
buying you know, a certain amount, and if you just
go out and buy just below that amount and you
get a bunch of people doing it and they call smurfs,
then you get enough to make your batch. So's and
there are a couple of other things that there are
(10:32):
a couple of other I guess avenues we should call
them where wherein dirty money can be cleaned or laundered.
Their alternative banking institutions of sorts, many that are traditional,
like the Kalas system in Pakistan and India. These are
trust based systems that don't have a paper trail. They
(10:52):
out they operate outside of government control. And then of
course there's one of my as a kid, this is
one of my favorite idea is shell companies. You know
a corporation that is a po box in some country
that's very good at not paying close attention to business transactions.
And these companies exist for no other reason than to
(11:14):
clean money. So they'll take in money as a payment
for some kind of good or service. Let's call it
yacht maintenance, you know, uh with Murdoch Farnsworth's yacht maintenance business. Right.
And what that does is allow people to say that
(11:35):
they spent this money right to get their yacht fixed,
their non existent yacht. It doesn't have to be a
fake company doing that. You can do it in a
real a real company that just handles cash, like what
kind of we talked about earlier, which is crazy. You
could you could walk into a casino if you know
the guys, and you have a little deal just because
(11:57):
the casino deals with cash so often you just go, well,
you know, here's some cash that came into the casino today. Yeah,
And those are a little different because they're they're front companies,
so they yeah, they are obviously like they're legitimate ways
to do this. They're actually providing a good or a service.
And there are two ways to do that. We could
either you like how all three of us now are
(12:17):
working together to launder money. Actually do you like how
all of us are working together? Now, Listeners, you're part
of this. If you're a copy you have to tell
us is technically not true, by the way, so I
don't believe any of your friends who say that. But
there are two ways to do this, generally, if we're
talking about a front company rather than a shell company.
Oh and just a side note. The thing I loved
(12:39):
the reason I love the idea of shell companies because
when I was very young and there were shell gas
stations around and I thought, Wow, they must be running
drugs or doing something bad and no one knows. I
thought I had figured out, you know what a shell
company was back then. Oh my gosh, right I was.
(13:00):
I was like, yeah, that's genius. No one will ever
investigate them. I was wrong on all accounts. But so
there are two ways we've want to do a legitimate
front end business. And one way is to deal with
the business that make uses so much money, so much
cash or electronic funds, that it's easy to slip some
(13:24):
bad apples into the into the bushel, into the basket.
And those would be things, like you said, Matt, like
a casino or brokerage firm, or you can use the
smaller stuff that often uses cash just in a stay
to day. We can name a few. We said, car washes,
that's one, bars, check cashing stores, and America's favorite strip clubs.
(13:47):
Oh yeah, right, lots of lots on, lots of ones,
lots of lots of two dollar bills. I don't know
in those comments. So the the effects about this, uh,
we we have Mr Maser talking a little bit about
the effects of money laundry when it gets larger and larger.
(14:08):
What happens is international banks become involved. So b c
c I was the seventh largest bank in the world,
as Mr Maser said in his previous interview, but b
c c I is far from the only bank that
has been involved with this. For instance, we talked a
(14:32):
little bit about some banks in the past. Yeah, he
hits Wacovia, a huge scandal there. We hit HSBC in
the interview and Mr Maser goes into pretty good detail
on both of those saying exactly what they did. Because
I think we should probably get to Mr Maser himself
as he um had lived this all of the things
(14:53):
that we're talking about, and there's still some very interesting
things to say yet in this interview. But before we
get to that, we're just gonna take a quick break
for a sponsor. So you mentioned that this is occurring now,
and you'd also mentioned in the past, I think it
(15:15):
was you did an interview with The New York Times
and you spoke about the hundreds of leads that were
not followed up after the c Chase investigation. And it
makes me wonder what would have been uncovered if they
would have followed those leads, and could it possibly have
kind of stopped some of what we're seeing today. M hmm, Okay,
(15:38):
the first party I got the leads part, the first
part of yours still happening today? Yeah, well, it's it's
definitely still happening today because we've got the scourge of
illegal drugs all over the world to a greater degree
than we've ever had it before. Um. You know, the
United Nations on Drugs and Crime to study a few
years ago trying to identify the amount of money seeking
(16:00):
secrecy from governments, the amount of money seeking money laundering
services every year. And in that study that they did,
and you can get that just on the internet. Just
put in U N O d C. United Nations on
Drugs and crime, UM, money laundering, UM. Just look for
some other keywords. But long and short of it is
(16:22):
they identifying that the annual drug proceeds illegal drug proceeds
was somewhere in the vicinity of about four billion dollars.
And if you look at the Department of Justice Asset
forfit your website, you can see what the annual forfeitures
are for the Department Justice. Keep in mind that that's
(16:43):
for all kinds of cases, so pharmaceutical UH finds against
pharmaceuticals for UH, different types of offenses UM, medicare, medic fraud,
all kinds of different things are in there. You boil
it down to the drug money, and it comes down
to you. There's no you can say it's more than
a billion. To hear so fo verses a billion, that's
(17:04):
one four one um. Clearly, UH, there are professionals that
are involved helping people to in a sophisticated way, launder
this money. Otherwise we'll be finding more than one fourth UM.
If you want to look at the deferred prosecutions UM
that have happened, and even if we just stick to
those that relate to drug proceeds, you know you have
(17:27):
in two thousand and twelve the HSBC case UM. In
that instance, UM, just google senator UM Elizabeth Warren HSBC
UM YouTube and you'll you'll get to hear our own
senators talking about how atrocious it is in their view
that a bank can launder own nearly a billion dollars
(17:50):
and nobody goes to jail and UH they pay at
one point nine two billion dollar fine. UM. That's just
a few years ago before that you have Wacovia Bank
paid a hundred sixty million dollar fine. What were they
doing They had no branches in Mexico. What they did
is they sent their account executives from Philadelphia, Miami to
(18:11):
Sinaloa and other areas of Mexico to deal with houses
of exchange causes. They come you as correspondent bank relationships.
And what they did is they wounded up taking fourteen
billion dollars in cash deposits UH and bringing it in
over a period of about three years back into the
(18:32):
United States. They did that on by by having the
cash brought in by armored cars and flown in and
gone going to accounting houses established by the bank in
different parts of the United States. I know one of
them is in California. UM. Tell me how it is
that you don't have any branches in Mexico, but you
decide to market that business. You bring in fourteen billion.
(18:55):
I was a money launder undercover. My money that we
got from my clients earned five tens and twenties. So
it's a big bundle. Uh. If it was twenty dollar
bills and fourteen billion, I think I did the math,
and it came out to about seven eighty tons. So
who would you get the seven tons of cash from?
You know, you look at the HSDC bas uh, they
(19:18):
were repatriated in US currency a hundred and six billion
dollars a hundred and six billion, So if that was twenties,
it comes out to about I think it was fifty
eight hundred tons. So UM, I don't I don't know.
I don't understand how we we wind up um dealing
in this boat bank note business the way we have historically,
(19:42):
and and we don't wind up with very big of
a change, you know, in the the overall picture, in
the way of the how deep the talents of the
cartels are into um uh, into the drug trade um
and you know, and things have actually gotten worse in
the last well, I would say in the last seven
(20:04):
or eight years, because now there's a body of cases
that clearly show that the that terrorist organizations are working
closely with the Colombian cartels and the Mexican cartels. Then
you couldn't look at the case. The last name is
Juma j o U m a A. I'm in a
y m N Duma j o U m a A.
So google that and drug trafficking. UM. The Mr. Juma
(20:26):
is a Lebanese Columbian who was very instrumental in UM
the exportation of about three hundred tons of cocaine and
the laundering about a half a billion dollars in drug
proceeds and UM when the funds were traced in that case, UM,
there were definitely portions of the drug proceeds that went
(20:46):
into accounts that have been substantiated to have been used
by Hesbela for terrorist related activity. So we have Hesblah,
Hamas al Qaeda and other organizations that have recognized this
as a way to UH generate revenue for their illegal activities. So, UM, yes,
(21:06):
this stuff is still going on. That's part of why
I feel it's so important to share this information with
the world. UM. There's a couple of reasons I think
it's so important. One, I think it's extraordinarily important because
this case was a team effort. I'd say that at
the heights of the operation two fifty or more, there
(21:27):
are a lot of masers out there. There are literally
dozens of people who volunteer to work long term undercover
because they want to be a part of making a
difference and they want to serve the public. Um and
and I think we lose sight of that in today's
day and age for some strange reason, Um, we don't
(21:48):
realize that there are people out there who they're not
eager to do this, but if it should happen, are
committed to give their life for us, just like soldiers
on a battlefield. And the greatest majority of the law
members of the law enforcement community, in my view, are
good and honorable people who are prepared to make that sacrifice. Uh.
(22:09):
And and today especially when we look at unfortunately in
every profession, I'm sure journalism as well. You know, you
have a bell curve of life, and you have some
people who are probably shouldn't be journalists. Well, we've got
been in law enforcement too, and when they do something stupid, Um,
I think it's really so unfair to paint that stupidity
(22:31):
on the entire profession, because the greatest majority of people
out there are truly willing to give their lives for
you and your families to give you a better place
to live and to get the world a better place
to exist. So that's a part of it, and the
other part of it is to make sure that the
American public knows that this is a constant problem. The
(22:56):
equation we're using is the best thing I guess we've
figured we can come across. But if things are getting worse,
maybe we need to reassess what the equation is because
we can't continue to allow governments to become corrupted, and
we can't continue to allow um a lot of people
to get extraordinarily sick um from the use of illegal drugs.
(23:21):
So something needs to be done. And it's something that
my experience to date tells me is that the equation
can benefit substantially from an added amount of education, treatment,
and economic opportunity, at least in this country. Um, I
think that could make a I think that could make
a positive add on to the formula that we now have.
(23:44):
I think it's really an opportunity. Through this film to
be entertained, but it's also an opportunity to use that
platform to talk about the issues because these are issues
that affect each and every one of us. YEA, And
we really appreciate the message that you are sending with
(24:05):
this regarding the what what's the old definition of insanity?
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Right? Um? So,
Mr Maser, what is what in your opinion? You talked
a little bit about education, right and treatment? What in
your opinions should change in terms of policy or legislation
(24:27):
to prevent this situation where banks are essentially seeing these
fines as a cost of doing business tax m hm, Well,
I think it goes to the same thing we can
say about the wrongdoing in the law enforcement community. Individual responsibility,
(24:47):
holding people responsible for their acts, people, not institutions. Please
don't try to tell me as I've seen people within
the government trying to tell the American like UM. And
this this was said, um when it was determined by
the Department of Justice that the appropriate disposition of the
(25:09):
HSBC case was simply a fine of one point nine
two billion UM. When someone tried to suggest that you
have to understand that these are very complicated statutes in
order to apply individual responsibility for the violation of and
this is just legal speak in my mind, um intentionally
failing to maintain an antime money laundering compliance program. Well, yea,
(25:33):
if you're gonna use an obscure statute like that, I
can see how you might be able to make those arguments.
But you know, the Department of Justice in n and
Congress in six gave us the opportunity to use the
money Wondering Statute, and I don't know why it wasn't applied.
It's not very complicated. What it says is if you
know that money comes from a specified unlawful source, and
(25:55):
one of those is drug trafficking. There's a long list
of specified and unlawful activity. But if you know it
came from a specified and lawful activity and you do
anything to conceal in disguise the source of the funds,
guess what you just committed money lundering. It's the point
of year offense, and I believe it's a five tho
dollar fine. That's the statute that is most applicable in
these cases. And one of the problems we face is
(26:17):
that the way we go about working these things oftentimes
comes on the heels of regulators who are looking at
records three years old. Um, it's a real challenge to
be able to prove what was in the mind of
the person that carried out the transaction three years ago.
So these long term undercover operations that capture on tape
exactly what people know at the time of transactions were done.
It is a pretty darn effective tool. We don't use
(26:39):
it enough. There are a lot of other things that
we don't. I mean, I've written pieces for The New
York Times and others about how it is that I
would recommend that we really seriously think about readjusting how
we go after money wanderers. Um. But the long and
short of it is, we seem to be, as you said,
(27:00):
doing the same thing over and over and over again
and not being willing to open our mind into, um,
the idea of perfecting, you know, improving the approach. It
seems like right now, more than ever, we're experiencing something
of a sea change in terms of prohibition of drugs,
(27:22):
specifically with with marijuana. A lot of areas are moving
away from that decriminalizing and outright you know, legalizing. What
do you see as as the benefits and of course
the dangers of decriminalizing and even legalizing drugs, perhaps ones
that are more insidious than something like marijuana. Yeah, well,
I'm not willing to go pass the marijuana discussion on
(27:43):
that because I don't I don't understand a society that
would really be promoting the idea of meth ampheta mean
heroin um UM and a lot of other even more
dangerous drugs UM out on the street. But UM, you know,
when it comes to marijuana, let's take a close look
at what's occurring UM in Washington and Colorado, in in
a few other states that have across the board legalized UM.
(28:08):
You often, oftentimes you have a limited number of licenses
for the production, and you have people coming from many
different corners to buy. And so let's not forget the
old adage of economics one on one from college, Supply
and demand. UM. When you have limited supply UM, your
(28:29):
price is going to go up. So the price that's
being offered or being charged for high end UM marijuana
is probably not probably in fact, is substantially higher than
what you can get on the black market in the
same locations because they don't have the problem of licensing
(28:49):
and all of all the other issues that are going on.
So in effect, we've kind of created um green zones
for the cartels. UM in the air is um. But
you know, I really do believe that if you haven't
educated and provided adequate treatment to your citizens, and now
(29:13):
you're going to open the floodgates and you're going to
contemplate the idea of just legalizing all kinds of illegal
drugs across the board, I don't see a pretty ending
to that whatsoever. I've been on a lot of shows
in the last several years and some professiving libertarians, and
(29:34):
when I say my concerns about that, I get to
come back from him, well, isn't that a good thing?
I mean, basically, these people will just all die off
and and we won't have this problem. That's not a
part of my thinking. I don't embrace that whatsoever. UM. So,
I think the problem is a little bit more complicated
than just um making it available across the board. I
(29:56):
think number one, we need to get into education and
treatment so that we can get the man down. And
and number two, if we're going to get into legalization,
let's try to get ourselves organized on the on the
marijuana side before we start thinking about UM. I don't
know if you you guys know anybody who's used met ampet.
I mean, but I've seen pictures of them, and I
(30:18):
met I've met I've met him, because you know, when
you're a copy, you do and after about two or
three experiences, it owns them. I don't want my doctor
being a fault in that. And I don't. Of course,
one would say, well, the drugs are readily available even
though they're illegal, so you know, if they want to
get involved in it, they can. And I understand all
(30:38):
those arguments, but I just can't see condoning as a
society UM on a broad basis, making really dangerous drugs
available to UM to a population on a statewide, sanctioned basis.
I just I can't do it, maybe because I was
a copto law. Robert, thank you so much for talking
(31:00):
with us so far. Man, it's been quite enlightening. We
really appreciate it. We are coming up at the to
the end of our time that we have with you,
and we I just want to ask you if there's
one thing that you could leave with the audience today,
what would it be. I think all of these issues
we're talking about boiled down to individual responsibility. I looked
(31:24):
the problems that we had out there today, uh, in
the backlash of bad conduct by a few police officers, UM,
and how we're trying to deal with it, Um, some
people try to deal with it, um indicting an entire profession. UM.
I'm not saying that there aren't some reflections that shouldn't
(31:46):
be done across the board, but let's let's try to
let's try to move more toward individual responsibility. I think
that's going to help in the money ordering world. Individually
responsible people, those people who are involved in turning hundreds
of billions of dollars into legitimate businesses that corrupt governments
(32:08):
around the world. UM, we need to we need to
let the people know who are involved in that type
of activity that if they do that, they're going to
go to jail. They're not just gonna go to jail,
They're gonna go to jail for a real long period
of time. Until we get that were we are not
going to have a lot of people out there who
are going to be afraid to do that type of stuff.
And I think you can apply that to most of
(32:29):
the basic problems that we've been we've been talking about
individual responsibility and and uh and not painting with such
a broad brush um on all these issues. Well, there
(32:50):
you have it. That was a lot of fun. I mean,
definitely went to some pretty dark places. Um. It really
makes you wonder how all much of this is going
on at the same level, if not worse than it
was when when Maser was doing you know, his his
his operation and it It's sort of like one of
(33:10):
these things where you see someone making such a huge
difference in a particular time, but does it make a
huge difference long term? You know, there's just always new
ways of getting around these things. The banks are not
getting any less corrupt, you know, like he was talking
about this toothless prosecution. These banks, you know, can afford
(33:32):
to pay these fines. It is, as he said, the
cost of doing business. And until somehow we change the
just the foundation of this capitalist system where money is
always better than less money. You know what's good. I
don't understand you. I don't don't know what the answer is. Guys.
That it left me I want I don't hate to
(33:54):
say it, but it left me not not particularly hopeful.
I feel like he kind of gave us an answer there,
and it's jail, the bankers, all the people who you
can who you can directly connect with going through these processes.
And you know, I gotta say, I pretty I think
I agree with him. I think that's that's where we
need to go. Also must point out that in these actions,
(34:17):
it's so easy to paint a broad brush and say,
you know the drug dealers or the bankers. We have
to remember that an organizations of this size, you know,
the people who are out there, for instance, harvesting coca leaves,
they're not living high on the hog by any means.
(34:37):
The people who are the tellers at the branch of
your local bank or credit union overwhelmingly have nothing to
do with this. So just because someone works at a
bank doesn't necessarily make them an international supervillain. However, at
the top, there clearly are people who are doing things
(34:58):
like HSBC did uh to pay a fine a little
less than two billion dollars after admitting money laundering to
see no consequences of that action. And right now, the
illegal drug trade accounts for an estimated eight percent of
all international trade, so that's almost ten percent of all
(35:19):
the stuff traveling around this planet is gonna is going
to be UH into financial terms, some kind of illegal
substance we will need to be laundered and the money
behind it will need to be laundered. So there is
a demand for this kind of business. We mentioned Bank
of America, also Western Union, JP Morgan and oddly enough,
(35:44):
this is a little bit of a different discussion than
we touched on in the previous episode. But oddly enough,
you guys, apparently banks in the US are being very
unhelpful to UH to legalize marijuana businesses. Well, yeah, they
they've got a hand, they've got skin in the game there.
(36:05):
There was a quote from the film by the character
played by Benjamin Bratt Roberto Alcano Alcano where he said,
if your country didn't have my money, your economy would collapse,
which I think he may have been right, which is
pretty scary. He was. He was one of the main
(36:26):
Escobar money men. And again the film we're talking about
is The Infiltrader, and we didn't really talk about that
one in this episode so much as we have the
last one in case you missed it, and it's worth
checking out. It should be coming out. Um, I believe
any Daniel Oh come on, though, we we were pretty
clear at the beginning. If anybody's listening to the end
of this, then surely you've already listened to episode one,
(36:47):
I would hope. But you know, sometimes people don't follow instructions.
That's true. That's true. I'm pretty terrible instructions. We just
sort of wing it every time. So so that is
the situation SHN as it stands today. One of the
things that Mr Maser obviously has obviously sees as an
(37:10):
error in policy is the use of deferred prosecution right
Removing the consequences removes any incentive to obey the law. Unfortunately,
although I believe every person has the potential to be
amazing and astonishing and noble and moral and all all
(37:30):
that slow jazz, unfortunately people often only don't do horrible
things because consequences exist. In a world without consequences, or
a situation without consequences, people can turn into animals. And
it's very easy to rationalize those actions. And how fascinating
is it that corporations can't be prosecuted as though they
(37:55):
were individuals, but yet can give money to political campaigns
as if they were. It's a little counterintuitive to me. Oh, Yeah,
I definitely feel you either. And so concludes for the
moment our series on money laundering on the underground narcotics trade,
(38:15):
and we have, in the course of this exploration found
so many other things that are captivating. If you haven't
seen it yet, we'd love for you to check out
our recent video on Narco Saints on the religious practices
of criminals around the world. Definitely a lot to chew
on there. Um, we really appreciate Mr Maser making the
(38:38):
time to talk with us, and um, I think we
got a lot out of it, got two episodes out
of it, which is cool. And I'm vacation next week,
so sucker, good luck man. I will see you back
in that chair. But before you go, there's one last
thing you got to help us out with. I think
I know what that might be. Shut at Corners could do.
(39:01):
First order of business. Shout out one goes to Jen Jones. Hi, guys,
I just listened to your sleep paralysis episode and wanted
to share my own experiences. I experienced it a bit
differently than most. I have never felt like someone is
choking me or seen any operations at the foot of
my bed. Very very common description of these sleep paralysis scenarios,
of which we got a metric ton of via email,
which was great to hear people UM sharing their experience
(39:23):
with us. Instead, says Jen, I like completely still very
aware of where my body is, with the overwhelming feeling
that I need to wake up immediately or something is
going to get inside my body before I can return
to consciousness. Often after a bout of this, I will
find strange bruises and scratches, either on my wrists or ankles,
depending on which limb was closest to the edge of
(39:45):
my bed. Anyway, thanks for the show, and then she
asked for a shout out. So, Jen, this is a
definitely unique UM scenario with the sleep aroalysis, and I
find it fascinating. I have no explanation for this shout
out to you, Jen, if indeed it is you writing
at our next shout out goes to Keith are also
(40:05):
known as the Venomous Moose. Of course, uh. Keith says,
I've been listening to your podcast The Laden have been
going through past episodes, and I listened to the does
the UK Control the US episode the day before yesterday.
As he writes this, so after being saddened that next month,
might not really be Independence Day, sab in sarcasm. He's
(40:27):
killing it with the indications here. I'm getting the tone
he says, I caught onto the city of London and
what that is. Imagine my surprise when reading an article
about Brexit that the city of London wanted to remain
in the EU. That phrase would have slipped by the uninitiated.
But now I am more clued into world events because
of your podcast, and I am aware. Props to you,
(40:48):
Mr Venomous. Well, props to you, Mr Venomous, and thanks
so much for checking out the show. The UK controlling
the US is a pretty interesting topic. The city of
London is bizarre. I know we've mentioned before just how
strange it is, but man, I want to visit there
are you know, there are opportunities to visit. If you're
(41:12):
the queen, you have to ask permission to go, but
I think we can probably just go down. Yeah, And
if anybody out there, you know, wants to host a
couple of traveling podcasters, UM just hit us up on
conspiracy at how suffworks dot com. A couple of ragtag Yanks,
three ragtag Yanks, and the final shout out today goes
to Tyler, a who says, Hey, guys, long time listener here.
(41:36):
I've been following China's island building habits in the South
China Sea for a for a while, and I thought, hey,
this topic would be interesting for you guys to do
an episode on. There's a reason that they're building the
islands in the South China see. Tyler says. The islands
have a long history, going all the way back to
the pot Stem Conference, and the area has been a
hot bit of controversy since then. In most recent news,
(41:59):
the Haig has ruled that China has no sovereignty over
the area, but lacks resources to enforce such a controversial ruling,
prompting mobilization of naval forces on behalf of the US,
which in my eyes is pretty troubling. So that's this
is something that we touched on during the World War
Three ways World War Three may start video when we
(42:19):
did that, and we touched on some of that on
audio as well, And it's a bit disconcerting to see
it happening in real life, ben the way things are unfolding, right.
So the case that we're referring to in the u
n or the Hague was a comes from an international
tribunal called the Permanent Court of Arbitration. And what they did,
(42:44):
and the next big step here is they declared China's
historic claims in the South China Sea invalid. This was
a pretty wide ranging, clear cut ruling. The surprised a
lot of people who watch international affairs or especially watched
this region. The case dates back to two thousand thirteen.
The Philippines filed the case when China grab control of
(43:05):
a reef called the Scarborough Shore. It's about two hundred
and twenty miles northwest of Manila, or for everybody outside
of the US, Myanmar and Namibia, it's three kilometers. So
the thing is about a third of the world's trade
passes through the sea lanes of the South China Sea,
(43:26):
including most of China's oil imports, and the ground under
it has vast reserves of oil and gas. But uh,
there's a growing military presence on the Chinese side of
the US has two aircraft carriers in there recently, and
there's a live fire exercise that China's navy was recently staging.
(43:49):
So what we're seeing here is the idea of rule
based international order, at least that's how the West would
argue it and the Chinese view of what are seeing
as his store rights that trump current global laws, and
the issue of historic rights or claims to land or
(44:10):
resources come up in repeated and tragic instances throughout world's history, right,
so who actually owns the land upon which people reside?
Who has a more historically legitimate claim to some piece
(44:31):
of soil or a kilometer of ocean or river. And
unfortunately this kind of stuff is rarely concluded in a
civilized or mutually respectful fashion, and you can point to
numerous other instances of it occurring right now in the
(44:56):
world in which we live. And if that precedent, uh
for most other cases remains the same, then there's there's
probably not going to be um and end to this
situation as ideal to all these to all the involved parties.
So the Chinese argument is that in centuries and centuries
(45:21):
in the past, Chinese seafair is discovered and named islands
in the region, and that the country of China itself
has ancestral fishing rights there. So there's also internal propaganda
going on about this. In July, State Television Company in
China began a mini series about the experience of Chinese
(45:43):
fishermen in the nineteen forties, enforcing coincidentally, China's view of
the South China Sea. So what what these rights are
said to be defined by is what was called a
nine dash line. It's still usually called that, even though
in it became a ten dash line to bring to
(46:05):
Juan into the fold. Uh. This this takes up about
it extends about fift kilometers from the southern coast of
China and maps out all of the all of the
sea in that area. So countries that have borders along
that sea, like the Philippines or um well they're Southeast
Asian countries, are of Japan as well, obviously think this
(46:29):
is cutting into their peace of the Oceanic pie. So
the reason they think that is because due to the
U n Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries
have what's called an exclusive Economic zonner EAZY that goes
up to two d nautical miles or again for anybody
outside of the United States, Myanmar and Namibia seventy kilometers
(46:51):
off their coast or around their islands. So it is
true that China has been building artificial islands to reinforce
these claims. Anyway, we can talk about this for a while,
but the situation is clearly unsustainable and it's unfortunately not
a unique situation. Thanks so much for writing to us, Tyler,
(47:14):
And if you would like to write to us, you
can do it in the usual ways. You can do
it via Facebook, where we are stuff they don't want
you to know. You can do it via Twitter, where
we are at conspiracy stuff. We have an Instagram now
which we've been getting a little bit of love on,
which is lovely. We've been trying to post a little
bit more and I think we might just do a
post after we were finished recording the show. Yeah, and
(47:36):
so you know, we have a little caption contests and
things like that. It's a fun way to stay in touch. Um.
And if none of that does it for you, what
what else is there? Guys? Well, first of all, you
have to say it's conspiracy stuff show people. If you're
having a hard time finding it is conspiracy stuff, show yes.
And if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you just want to write to us with your suggestions,
because our best shows always begin in your brains and
(47:59):
then come out through our mouths. Somehow that sounds odd,
but that's how it happens. You can write to us.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com, m
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
(00:21):
name is no and I am Ben you are you
don't call it a comeback, ladies and gentlemen, but wait,
can we get a slam on the brakes? Noise and
no perfect You can in fact call this a comeback
because this is part two of our interview with Robert
Maser in our previous episode, which we do recommend you
(00:43):
listen to before listening to this if you if you
haven't yet, go ahead and stop this listen to part one.
We'll be here. And in this episode we're going to
focus on money laundering. In the previous episode it was
all about the operations, and this one it's what's happened
right now. Are there still banks out there that are
taking money from drug cartels and somehow funneling funneling them
(01:06):
through banks in in Europe and other places and then
getting money that they can use just out in the open.
And not to mention, I mean, so much of what
is going on now um has been built off of
the work that Mr Maser did in terms of exposing
some of these techniques that the banks used that we
will talk about in much more detail in this part
(01:27):
of the interview. Um, so you could kind of look
at part one is sort of a history and this
part two being sort of more of a of a
present and moving forward kind of perspective on where we
are now and where all of this insane undercover work
that Mr Maser did has led us to spot on.
So first, let's take a little bit of a closer
(01:49):
look at what money laundering actually is. There's a great
article on it at our parent website, How Stuff Works.
I know that side, Yes, yes, I would hope that
we are the three of us are familiar with that side.
We hope you are, two ladies and gentlemen. In the
article how Money Laundering Works. The author here, let's see,
(02:10):
the author is Julia Layton, and you always know it's
going to be a good article if Julia is writing
the The author explains money laundering in in this way. First,
it's very common. Money laundering happens in almost every country
in the world. Second, there are numerous avenues of money laundering. Right,
so one scheme, for instance, typically involved transferring money through
(02:32):
several different countries to obscure where it came from. Right,
So we know that a million dollars coming from France
or London or the US is treated with less suspicion
than a million dollars coming from Columbia, for instance, or
a million dollars just appearing in Afghanistan right, or in
(02:56):
the case of the U S Military, millions of dollars
disappe here in somewhere. So at its simplest, it's just
the act of making money that comes from source A
look like it comes from source B. So this is
not the money from a cocaine empire. This is the
money from legitimate yet ridiculously successful series of laundromats or
(03:19):
what's another come on, laundromats for laundering money. Yeah, for me,
it reminds me of the onion router a little bit,
I was gonna say, Or even like a VPN where
it like takes you know, it obscures your location, um
like so that you you can't pin down where the
person that's doing the illegal downloading or whatever it is
(03:40):
actually is and it basically disguises their IP address. That
same thing occurred to me totally. Yeah, or if anything,
it slows the process of tracking it way way down. Right. So,
for fans of the television show Breaking Bad, if we
want to have a pop culture reference in here, for
fans of that show, laser tag right right, Uh there
(04:01):
there are series there's a series of events where in UH,
a group of drug dealers is trying to find the correct,
safest way to launder money. And at the level they
are operating at UH, they are looking for a business
that primarily moves a lot of cash, and so one
of the would be businesses is a laser tag places
(04:23):
Nold points out UH. And then they also eventually settle
on a car wash, another place that usually UH uses
a lot of cash rather than credit or debit cards.
The most common types of criminals who need to launder
money are, of course drug traffickers, right, but they're not
the only people. There are also corrupt politicians, embezzlers, terrorists, yeah,
(04:50):
mobsters who shook some money out of some people, Yeah,
racketeers and then which sounds way more friendly and somehow
like some you know, Yeah, it just makes me think
of a mousketeer. I don't know why it makes anything
or that movie The Rocketeer, Rocketeer. And it also makes
me think of, uh, maybe there's a show in Vegas
(05:11):
that's mafio so only called the Racketeers, and maybe they
on camera shake people down. There's those you know, those
can can dancers at Radio City Music called the Rackets. Yeah,
it's really they're called the rockets already. So did you
(05:31):
already mention white collar like embezzlement like high levels. Yeah,
that's a fantastic point. We touched on that, but let's
go into a little more detail. Well, it seems like
you have to do this if you're siphoning money out
of your the company that you work for, let's say
your high level executive. And we've seen this happen at
several companies H and Ron, a couple others. Um, it
(05:54):
seems like you would want to obscure that money as well.
And they're going to use the same tactics that a
drug Affrica is going to use. Yes, also, one of
my favorites, or at least favorite terms confidence men scammers right,
rip off enthusiasts. So these common then will do the
same thing regardless. What they do is they enter in
(06:16):
this money for perhaps into an offshore account of somewhere,
you know, someplace, and then filter that through a process
called layering. Right, so maybe this goes from the off
shore account, it goes to another offshore accounter, it goes
to account in Europe or account in the US, or
maybe they just buy a boat with this off shore account,
(06:38):
and then it goes into what's called the integration phase,
wherein it goes to maybe the boat and when the
off shores goes to a US account or maybe one
of these secondary accounts in Europe or in the U
S wherever goes into a business investment. So now, uh,
(06:59):
now Mr Barr to be from part one is no
longer a no longer a purveyor of human trafficking spoils.
We get really dark with that one. You have actually
retired that alias and now going by the name Steven Stevenson,
Stephen Stevenson, Okay, cool, uh yeah, alright, Steven Stevenson. It's
(07:20):
a whole new man. And he owns a chain of
blockbusters in Hungary or something, and that's where he makes
all of that's where he has made his millions blockbusters
killing it in Hungry. Right Now, that's one guy. It's
Steve Stevenson magic. Uh So, so we see this pretty simply, right,
(07:40):
uh Sending the money through various financial transactions to change
its form make it difficult to follow. Musilla or Maser
dealt with a lot of this in h in the
course of operations see chase. And then the integration, the
stage where it enters the mainstream economy and it looks legit,
you know, it's a bunch of hung Garrean blockbusters or something.
(08:02):
This this means that you can use the money if
you're a criminal without getting caught at this point, if
you successfully integrate, because it's very very difficult to catch
a launderer during the integration stage if there's no documentation
all the way back to the the original point. You know.
(08:23):
So we mentioned white collar crime, we mentioned drug traffic,
and we mentioned terrorists activities, and we mentioned some of
the methods of of this. Right, I can walk us
through a money laundering thing called smurfing. Sounds grea wait
(08:43):
I remember hearing about this. Smurfing is when you break
up the amount. So you've got a million dollars whatever,
let's say a million dollars, You're gonna break it up
into a bunch of smaller payments of let's say, nine thousand,
nine nine pion dollars, because there's a ten thousand dollar
limit when you're operating in this dark money field, because
(09:08):
if you hit that ten thousand dollars, you're gonna get
pinned no matter where you're trying to move that money. UM.
I tried to move ten thousand dollars of savings one
time when I went to buy I know this is
a personal thing, but when I tried to put a
down payment on my house and it got pains, and
the person told me, well, why don't you break it
up into two payments of five thousand dollars just so
(09:29):
you don't have to go through all the hassle and
for anyone who wants to do that. So at ten
thousand dollars, every US bank has to report any transaction yes,
and and then there's all kinds of paperwork you have
to get into. The smurfs the origin of this name.
The smurfs are the multiple people who deposit these below
(09:50):
ten thousand dollar amounts in different bank accounts, one or
more bank accounts, and some of our audience members who
maybe work in a financial or banking system are familiar
with this, and we would love to hear your stories
if you've met some smurfs. That term is also using
breaking bad again for the folks that would go out
and buy just the legal amount of pseudo epha draine,
(10:11):
which is the precursor for making methamphetamine. And so they
were they were like you would get flagged or you
would not you would have they would report you for
buying you know, a certain amount, and if you just
go out and buy just below that amount and you
get a bunch of people doing it and they call smurfs,
then you get enough to make your batch. So's and
there are a couple of other things that there are
(10:32):
a couple of other I guess avenues we should call
them where wherein dirty money can be cleaned or laundered.
Their alternative banking institutions of sorts, many that are traditional,
like the Kalas system in Pakistan and India. These are
trust based systems that don't have a paper trail. They
(10:52):
out they operate outside of government control. And then of
course there's one of my as a kid, this is
one of my favorite idea is shell companies. You know
a corporation that is a po box in some country
that's very good at not paying close attention to business transactions.
And these companies exist for no other reason than to
(11:14):
clean money. So they'll take in money as a payment
for some kind of good or service. Let's call it
yacht maintenance, you know, uh with Murdoch Farnsworth's yacht maintenance business. Right.
And what that does is allow people to say that
(11:35):
they spent this money right to get their yacht fixed,
their non existent yacht. It doesn't have to be a
fake company doing that. You can do it in a
real a real company that just handles cash, like what
kind of we talked about earlier, which is crazy. You
could you could walk into a casino if you know
the guys, and you have a little deal just because
(11:57):
the casino deals with cash so often you just go, well,
you know, here's some cash that came into the casino today. Yeah,
And those are a little different because they're they're front companies,
so they yeah, they are obviously like they're legitimate ways
to do this. They're actually providing a good or a service.
And there are two ways to do that. We could
either you like how all three of us now are
(12:17):
working together to launder money. Actually do you like how
all of us are working together? Now, Listeners, you're part
of this. If you're a copy you have to tell
us is technically not true, by the way, so I
don't believe any of your friends who say that. But
there are two ways to do this, generally, if we're
talking about a front company rather than a shell company.
Oh and just a side note. The thing I loved
(12:39):
the reason I love the idea of shell companies because
when I was very young and there were shell gas
stations around and I thought, Wow, they must be running
drugs or doing something bad and no one knows. I
thought I had figured out, you know what a shell
company was back then. Oh my gosh, right I was.
(13:00):
I was like, yeah, that's genius. No one will ever
investigate them. I was wrong on all accounts. But so
there are two ways we've want to do a legitimate
front end business. And one way is to deal with
the business that make uses so much money, so much
cash or electronic funds, that it's easy to slip some
(13:24):
bad apples into the into the bushel, into the basket.
And those would be things, like you said, Matt, like
a casino or brokerage firm, or you can use the
smaller stuff that often uses cash just in a stay
to day. We can name a few. We said, car washes,
that's one, bars, check cashing stores, and America's favorite strip clubs.
(13:47):
Oh yeah, right, lots of lots on, lots of ones,
lots of lots of two dollar bills. I don't know
in those comments. So the the effects about this, uh,
we we have Mr Maser talking a little bit about
the effects of money laundry when it gets larger and larger.
(14:08):
What happens is international banks become involved. So b c
c I was the seventh largest bank in the world,
as Mr Maser said in his previous interview, but b
c c I is far from the only bank that
has been involved with this. For instance, we talked a
(14:32):
little bit about some banks in the past. Yeah, he
hits Wacovia, a huge scandal there. We hit HSBC in
the interview and Mr Maser goes into pretty good detail
on both of those saying exactly what they did. Because
I think we should probably get to Mr Maser himself
as he um had lived this all of the things
(14:53):
that we're talking about, and there's still some very interesting
things to say yet in this interview. But before we
get to that, we're just gonna take a quick break
for a sponsor. So you mentioned that this is occurring now,
and you'd also mentioned in the past, I think it
(15:15):
was you did an interview with The New York Times
and you spoke about the hundreds of leads that were
not followed up after the c Chase investigation. And it
makes me wonder what would have been uncovered if they
would have followed those leads, and could it possibly have
kind of stopped some of what we're seeing today. M hmm, Okay,
(15:38):
the first party I got the leads part, the first
part of yours still happening today? Yeah, well, it's it's
definitely still happening today because we've got the scourge of
illegal drugs all over the world to a greater degree
than we've ever had it before. Um. You know, the
United Nations on Drugs and Crime to study a few
years ago trying to identify the amount of money seeking
(16:00):
secrecy from governments, the amount of money seeking money laundering
services every year. And in that study that they did,
and you can get that just on the internet. Just
put in U N O d C. United Nations on
Drugs and crime, UM, money laundering, UM. Just look for
some other keywords. But long and short of it is
(16:22):
they identifying that the annual drug proceeds illegal drug proceeds
was somewhere in the vicinity of about four billion dollars.
And if you look at the Department of Justice Asset
forfit your website, you can see what the annual forfeitures
are for the Department Justice. Keep in mind that that's
(16:43):
for all kinds of cases, so pharmaceutical UH finds against
pharmaceuticals for UH, different types of offenses UM, medicare, medic fraud,
all kinds of different things are in there. You boil
it down to the drug money, and it comes down
to you. There's no you can say it's more than
a billion. To hear so fo verses a billion, that's
(17:04):
one four one um. Clearly, UH, there are professionals that
are involved helping people to in a sophisticated way, launder
this money. Otherwise we'll be finding more than one fourth UM.
If you want to look at the deferred prosecutions UM
that have happened, and even if we just stick to
those that relate to drug proceeds, you know you have
(17:27):
in two thousand and twelve the HSBC case UM. In
that instance, UM, just google senator UM Elizabeth Warren HSBC
UM YouTube and you'll you'll get to hear our own
senators talking about how atrocious it is in their view
that a bank can launder own nearly a billion dollars
(17:50):
and nobody goes to jail and UH they pay at
one point nine two billion dollar fine. UM. That's just
a few years ago before that you have Wacovia Bank
paid a hundred sixty million dollar fine. What were they
doing They had no branches in Mexico. What they did
is they sent their account executives from Philadelphia, Miami to
(18:11):
Sinaloa and other areas of Mexico to deal with houses
of exchange causes. They come you as correspondent bank relationships.
And what they did is they wounded up taking fourteen
billion dollars in cash deposits UH and bringing it in
over a period of about three years back into the
(18:32):
United States. They did that on by by having the
cash brought in by armored cars and flown in and
gone going to accounting houses established by the bank in
different parts of the United States. I know one of
them is in California. UM. Tell me how it is
that you don't have any branches in Mexico, but you
decide to market that business. You bring in fourteen billion.
(18:55):
I was a money launder undercover. My money that we
got from my clients earned five tens and twenties. So
it's a big bundle. Uh. If it was twenty dollar
bills and fourteen billion, I think I did the math,
and it came out to about seven eighty tons. So
who would you get the seven tons of cash from?
You know, you look at the HSDC bas uh, they
(19:18):
were repatriated in US currency a hundred and six billion
dollars a hundred and six billion, So if that was twenties,
it comes out to about I think it was fifty
eight hundred tons. So UM, I don't I don't know.
I don't understand how we we wind up um dealing
in this boat bank note business the way we have historically,
(19:42):
and and we don't wind up with very big of
a change, you know, in the the overall picture, in
the way of the how deep the talents of the
cartels are into um uh, into the drug trade um
and you know, and things have actually gotten worse in
the last well, I would say in the last seven
(20:04):
or eight years, because now there's a body of cases
that clearly show that the that terrorist organizations are working
closely with the Colombian cartels and the Mexican cartels. Then
you couldn't look at the case. The last name is
Juma j o U m a A. I'm in a
y m N Duma j o U m a A.
So google that and drug trafficking. UM. The Mr. Juma
(20:26):
is a Lebanese Columbian who was very instrumental in UM
the exportation of about three hundred tons of cocaine and
the laundering about a half a billion dollars in drug
proceeds and UM when the funds were traced in that case, UM,
there were definitely portions of the drug proceeds that went
(20:46):
into accounts that have been substantiated to have been used
by Hesbela for terrorist related activity. So we have Hesblah,
Hamas al Qaeda and other organizations that have recognized this
as a way to UH generate revenue for their illegal activities. So, UM, yes,
(21:06):
this stuff is still going on. That's part of why
I feel it's so important to share this information with
the world. UM. There's a couple of reasons I think
it's so important. One, I think it's extraordinarily important because
this case was a team effort. I'd say that at
the heights of the operation two fifty or more, there
(21:27):
are a lot of masers out there. There are literally
dozens of people who volunteer to work long term undercover
because they want to be a part of making a
difference and they want to serve the public. Um and
and I think we lose sight of that in today's
day and age for some strange reason, Um, we don't
(21:48):
realize that there are people out there who they're not
eager to do this, but if it should happen, are
committed to give their life for us, just like soldiers
on a battlefield. And the greatest majority of the law
members of the law enforcement community, in my view, are
good and honorable people who are prepared to make that sacrifice. Uh.
(22:09):
And and today especially when we look at unfortunately in
every profession, I'm sure journalism as well. You know, you
have a bell curve of life, and you have some
people who are probably shouldn't be journalists. Well, we've got
been in law enforcement too, and when they do something stupid, Um,
I think it's really so unfair to paint that stupidity
(22:31):
on the entire profession, because the greatest majority of people
out there are truly willing to give their lives for
you and your families to give you a better place
to live and to get the world a better place
to exist. So that's a part of it, and the
other part of it is to make sure that the
American public knows that this is a constant problem. The
(22:56):
equation we're using is the best thing I guess we've
figured we can come across. But if things are getting worse,
maybe we need to reassess what the equation is because
we can't continue to allow governments to become corrupted, and
we can't continue to allow um a lot of people
to get extraordinarily sick um from the use of illegal drugs.
(23:21):
So something needs to be done. And it's something that
my experience to date tells me is that the equation
can benefit substantially from an added amount of education, treatment,
and economic opportunity, at least in this country. Um, I
think that could make a I think that could make
a positive add on to the formula that we now have.
(23:44):
I think it's really an opportunity. Through this film to
be entertained, but it's also an opportunity to use that
platform to talk about the issues because these are issues
that affect each and every one of us. YEA, And
we really appreciate the message that you are sending with
(24:05):
this regarding the what what's the old definition of insanity?
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Right? Um? So,
Mr Maser, what is what in your opinion? You talked
a little bit about education, right and treatment? What in
your opinions should change in terms of policy or legislation
(24:27):
to prevent this situation where banks are essentially seeing these
fines as a cost of doing business tax m hm, Well,
I think it goes to the same thing we can
say about the wrongdoing in the law enforcement community. Individual responsibility,
(24:47):
holding people responsible for their acts, people, not institutions. Please
don't try to tell me as I've seen people within
the government trying to tell the American like UM. And
this this was said, um when it was determined by
the Department of Justice that the appropriate disposition of the
(25:09):
HSBC case was simply a fine of one point nine
two billion UM. When someone tried to suggest that you
have to understand that these are very complicated statutes in
order to apply individual responsibility for the violation of and
this is just legal speak in my mind, um intentionally
failing to maintain an antime money laundering compliance program. Well, yea,
(25:33):
if you're gonna use an obscure statute like that, I
can see how you might be able to make those arguments.
But you know, the Department of Justice in n and
Congress in six gave us the opportunity to use the
money Wondering Statute, and I don't know why it wasn't applied.
It's not very complicated. What it says is if you
know that money comes from a specified unlawful source, and
(25:55):
one of those is drug trafficking. There's a long list
of specified and unlawful activity. But if you know it
came from a specified and lawful activity and you do
anything to conceal in disguise the source of the funds,
guess what you just committed money lundering. It's the point
of year offense, and I believe it's a five tho
dollar fine. That's the statute that is most applicable in
these cases. And one of the problems we face is
(26:17):
that the way we go about working these things oftentimes
comes on the heels of regulators who are looking at
records three years old. Um, it's a real challenge to
be able to prove what was in the mind of
the person that carried out the transaction three years ago.
So these long term undercover operations that capture on tape
exactly what people know at the time of transactions were done.
It is a pretty darn effective tool. We don't use
(26:39):
it enough. There are a lot of other things that
we don't. I mean, I've written pieces for The New
York Times and others about how it is that I
would recommend that we really seriously think about readjusting how
we go after money wanderers. Um. But the long and
short of it is, we seem to be, as you said,
(27:00):
doing the same thing over and over and over again
and not being willing to open our mind into, um,
the idea of perfecting, you know, improving the approach. It
seems like right now, more than ever, we're experiencing something
of a sea change in terms of prohibition of drugs,
(27:22):
specifically with with marijuana. A lot of areas are moving
away from that decriminalizing and outright you know, legalizing. What
do you see as as the benefits and of course
the dangers of decriminalizing and even legalizing drugs, perhaps ones
that are more insidious than something like marijuana. Yeah, well,
I'm not willing to go pass the marijuana discussion on
(27:43):
that because I don't I don't understand a society that
would really be promoting the idea of meth ampheta mean
heroin um UM and a lot of other even more
dangerous drugs UM out on the street. But UM, you know,
when it comes to marijuana, let's take a close look
at what's occurring UM in Washington and Colorado, in in
a few other states that have across the board legalized UM.
(28:08):
You often, oftentimes you have a limited number of licenses
for the production, and you have people coming from many
different corners to buy. And so let's not forget the
old adage of economics one on one from college, Supply
and demand. UM. When you have limited supply UM, your
(28:29):
price is going to go up. So the price that's
being offered or being charged for high end UM marijuana
is probably not probably in fact, is substantially higher than
what you can get on the black market in the
same locations because they don't have the problem of licensing
(28:49):
and all of all the other issues that are going on.
So in effect, we've kind of created um green zones
for the cartels. UM in the air is um. But
you know, I really do believe that if you haven't
educated and provided adequate treatment to your citizens, and now
(29:13):
you're going to open the floodgates and you're going to
contemplate the idea of just legalizing all kinds of illegal
drugs across the board, I don't see a pretty ending
to that whatsoever. I've been on a lot of shows
in the last several years and some professiving libertarians, and
(29:34):
when I say my concerns about that, I get to
come back from him, well, isn't that a good thing?
I mean, basically, these people will just all die off
and and we won't have this problem. That's not a
part of my thinking. I don't embrace that whatsoever. UM. So,
I think the problem is a little bit more complicated
than just um making it available across the board. I
(29:56):
think number one, we need to get into education and
treatment so that we can get the man down. And
and number two, if we're going to get into legalization,
let's try to get ourselves organized on the on the
marijuana side before we start thinking about UM. I don't
know if you you guys know anybody who's used met ampet.
I mean, but I've seen pictures of them, and I
(30:18):
met I've met I've met him, because you know, when
you're a copy, you do and after about two or
three experiences, it owns them. I don't want my doctor
being a fault in that. And I don't. Of course,
one would say, well, the drugs are readily available even
though they're illegal, so you know, if they want to
get involved in it, they can. And I understand all
(30:38):
those arguments, but I just can't see condoning as a
society UM on a broad basis, making really dangerous drugs
available to UM to a population on a statewide, sanctioned basis.
I just I can't do it, maybe because I was
a copto law. Robert, thank you so much for talking
(31:00):
with us so far. Man, it's been quite enlightening. We
really appreciate it. We are coming up at the to
the end of our time that we have with you,
and we I just want to ask you if there's
one thing that you could leave with the audience today,
what would it be. I think all of these issues
we're talking about boiled down to individual responsibility. I looked
(31:24):
the problems that we had out there today, uh, in
the backlash of bad conduct by a few police officers, UM,
and how we're trying to deal with it, Um, some
people try to deal with it, um indicting an entire profession. UM.
I'm not saying that there aren't some reflections that shouldn't
(31:46):
be done across the board, but let's let's try to
let's try to move more toward individual responsibility. I think
that's going to help in the money ordering world. Individually
responsible people, those people who are involved in turning hundreds
of billions of dollars into legitimate businesses that corrupt governments
(32:08):
around the world. UM, we need to we need to
let the people know who are involved in that type
of activity that if they do that, they're going to
go to jail. They're not just gonna go to jail,
They're gonna go to jail for a real long period
of time. Until we get that were we are not
going to have a lot of people out there who
are going to be afraid to do that type of stuff.
And I think you can apply that to most of
(32:29):
the basic problems that we've been we've been talking about
individual responsibility and and uh and not painting with such
a broad brush um on all these issues. Well, there
(32:50):
you have it. That was a lot of fun. I mean,
definitely went to some pretty dark places. Um. It really
makes you wonder how all much of this is going
on at the same level, if not worse than it
was when when Maser was doing you know, his his
his operation and it It's sort of like one of
(33:10):
these things where you see someone making such a huge
difference in a particular time, but does it make a
huge difference long term? You know, there's just always new
ways of getting around these things. The banks are not
getting any less corrupt, you know, like he was talking
about this toothless prosecution. These banks, you know, can afford
(33:32):
to pay these fines. It is, as he said, the
cost of doing business. And until somehow we change the
just the foundation of this capitalist system where money is
always better than less money. You know what's good. I
don't understand you. I don't don't know what the answer is. Guys.
That it left me I want I don't hate to
(33:54):
say it, but it left me not not particularly hopeful.
I feel like he kind of gave us an answer there,
and it's jail, the bankers, all the people who you
can who you can directly connect with going through these processes.
And you know, I gotta say, I pretty I think
I agree with him. I think that's that's where we
need to go. Also must point out that in these actions,
(34:17):
it's so easy to paint a broad brush and say,
you know the drug dealers or the bankers. We have
to remember that an organizations of this size, you know,
the people who are out there, for instance, harvesting coca leaves,
they're not living high on the hog by any means.
(34:37):
The people who are the tellers at the branch of
your local bank or credit union overwhelmingly have nothing to
do with this. So just because someone works at a
bank doesn't necessarily make them an international supervillain. However, at
the top, there clearly are people who are doing things
(34:58):
like HSBC did uh to pay a fine a little
less than two billion dollars after admitting money laundering to
see no consequences of that action. And right now, the
illegal drug trade accounts for an estimated eight percent of
all international trade, so that's almost ten percent of all
(35:19):
the stuff traveling around this planet is gonna is going
to be UH into financial terms, some kind of illegal
substance we will need to be laundered and the money
behind it will need to be laundered. So there is
a demand for this kind of business. We mentioned Bank
of America, also Western Union, JP Morgan and oddly enough,
(35:44):
this is a little bit of a different discussion than
we touched on in the previous episode. But oddly enough,
you guys, apparently banks in the US are being very
unhelpful to UH to legalize marijuana businesses. Well, yeah, they
they've got a hand, they've got skin in the game there.
(36:05):
There was a quote from the film by the character
played by Benjamin Bratt Roberto Alcano Alcano where he said,
if your country didn't have my money, your economy would collapse,
which I think he may have been right, which is
pretty scary. He was. He was one of the main
(36:26):
Escobar money men. And again the film we're talking about
is The Infiltrader, and we didn't really talk about that
one in this episode so much as we have the
last one in case you missed it, and it's worth
checking out. It should be coming out. Um, I believe
any Daniel Oh come on, though, we we were pretty
clear at the beginning. If anybody's listening to the end
of this, then surely you've already listened to episode one,
(36:47):
I would hope. But you know, sometimes people don't follow instructions.
That's true. That's true. I'm pretty terrible instructions. We just
sort of wing it every time. So so that is
the situation SHN as it stands today. One of the
things that Mr Maser obviously has obviously sees as an
(37:10):
error in policy is the use of deferred prosecution right
Removing the consequences removes any incentive to obey the law. Unfortunately,
although I believe every person has the potential to be
amazing and astonishing and noble and moral and all all
(37:30):
that slow jazz, unfortunately people often only don't do horrible
things because consequences exist. In a world without consequences, or
a situation without consequences, people can turn into animals. And
it's very easy to rationalize those actions. And how fascinating
is it that corporations can't be prosecuted as though they
(37:55):
were individuals, but yet can give money to political campaigns
as if they were. It's a little counterintuitive to me. Oh, Yeah,
I definitely feel you either. And so concludes for the
moment our series on money laundering on the underground narcotics trade,
(38:15):
and we have, in the course of this exploration found
so many other things that are captivating. If you haven't
seen it yet, we'd love for you to check out
our recent video on Narco Saints on the religious practices
of criminals around the world. Definitely a lot to chew
on there. Um, we really appreciate Mr Maser making the
(38:38):
time to talk with us, and um, I think we
got a lot out of it, got two episodes out
of it, which is cool. And I'm vacation next week,
so sucker, good luck man. I will see you back
in that chair. But before you go, there's one last
thing you got to help us out with. I think
I know what that might be. Shut at Corners could do.
(39:01):
First order of business. Shout out one goes to Jen Jones. Hi, guys,
I just listened to your sleep paralysis episode and wanted
to share my own experiences. I experienced it a bit
differently than most. I have never felt like someone is
choking me or seen any operations at the foot of
my bed. Very very common description of these sleep paralysis scenarios,
of which we got a metric ton of via email,
which was great to hear people UM sharing their experience
(39:23):
with us. Instead, says Jen, I like completely still very
aware of where my body is, with the overwhelming feeling
that I need to wake up immediately or something is
going to get inside my body before I can return
to consciousness. Often after a bout of this, I will
find strange bruises and scratches, either on my wrists or ankles,
depending on which limb was closest to the edge of
(39:45):
my bed. Anyway, thanks for the show, and then she
asked for a shout out. So, Jen, this is a
definitely unique UM scenario with the sleep aroalysis, and I
find it fascinating. I have no explanation for this shout
out to you, Jen, if indeed it is you writing
at our next shout out goes to Keith are also
(40:05):
known as the Venomous Moose. Of course, uh. Keith says,
I've been listening to your podcast The Laden have been
going through past episodes, and I listened to the does
the UK Control the US episode the day before yesterday.
As he writes this, so after being saddened that next month,
might not really be Independence Day, sab in sarcasm. He's
(40:27):
killing it with the indications here. I'm getting the tone
he says, I caught onto the city of London and
what that is. Imagine my surprise when reading an article
about Brexit that the city of London wanted to remain
in the EU. That phrase would have slipped by the uninitiated.
But now I am more clued into world events because
of your podcast, and I am aware. Props to you,
(40:48):
Mr Venomous. Well, props to you, Mr Venomous, and thanks
so much for checking out the show. The UK controlling
the US is a pretty interesting topic. The city of
London is bizarre. I know we've mentioned before just how
strange it is, but man, I want to visit there
are you know, there are opportunities to visit. If you're
(41:12):
the queen, you have to ask permission to go, but
I think we can probably just go down. Yeah, And
if anybody out there, you know, wants to host a
couple of traveling podcasters, UM just hit us up on
conspiracy at how suffworks dot com. A couple of ragtag Yanks,
three ragtag Yanks, and the final shout out today goes
to Tyler, a who says, Hey, guys, long time listener here.
(41:36):
I've been following China's island building habits in the South
China Sea for a for a while, and I thought, hey,
this topic would be interesting for you guys to do
an episode on. There's a reason that they're building the
islands in the South China see. Tyler says. The islands
have a long history, going all the way back to
the pot Stem Conference, and the area has been a
hot bit of controversy since then. In most recent news,
(41:59):
the Haig has ruled that China has no sovereignty over
the area, but lacks resources to enforce such a controversial ruling,
prompting mobilization of naval forces on behalf of the US,
which in my eyes is pretty troubling. So that's this
is something that we touched on during the World War
Three ways World War Three may start video when we
(42:19):
did that, and we touched on some of that on
audio as well, And it's a bit disconcerting to see
it happening in real life, ben the way things are unfolding, right.
So the case that we're referring to in the u
n or the Hague was a comes from an international
tribunal called the Permanent Court of Arbitration. And what they did,
(42:44):
and the next big step here is they declared China's
historic claims in the South China Sea invalid. This was
a pretty wide ranging, clear cut ruling. The surprised a
lot of people who watch international affairs or especially watched
this region. The case dates back to two thousand thirteen.
The Philippines filed the case when China grab control of
(43:05):
a reef called the Scarborough Shore. It's about two hundred
and twenty miles northwest of Manila, or for everybody outside
of the US, Myanmar and Namibia, it's three kilometers. So
the thing is about a third of the world's trade
passes through the sea lanes of the South China Sea,
(43:26):
including most of China's oil imports, and the ground under
it has vast reserves of oil and gas. But uh,
there's a growing military presence on the Chinese side of
the US has two aircraft carriers in there recently, and
there's a live fire exercise that China's navy was recently staging.
(43:49):
So what we're seeing here is the idea of rule
based international order, at least that's how the West would
argue it and the Chinese view of what are seeing
as his store rights that trump current global laws, and
the issue of historic rights or claims to land or
(44:10):
resources come up in repeated and tragic instances throughout world's history, right,
so who actually owns the land upon which people reside?
Who has a more historically legitimate claim to some piece
(44:31):
of soil or a kilometer of ocean or river. And
unfortunately this kind of stuff is rarely concluded in a
civilized or mutually respectful fashion, and you can point to
numerous other instances of it occurring right now in the
(44:56):
world in which we live. And if that precedent, uh
for most other cases remains the same, then there's there's
probably not going to be um and end to this
situation as ideal to all these to all the involved parties.
So the Chinese argument is that in centuries and centuries
(45:21):
in the past, Chinese seafair is discovered and named islands
in the region, and that the country of China itself
has ancestral fishing rights there. So there's also internal propaganda
going on about this. In July, State Television Company in
China began a mini series about the experience of Chinese
(45:43):
fishermen in the nineteen forties, enforcing coincidentally, China's view of
the South China Sea. So what what these rights are
said to be defined by is what was called a
nine dash line. It's still usually called that, even though
in it became a ten dash line to bring to
(46:05):
Juan into the fold. Uh. This this takes up about
it extends about fift kilometers from the southern coast of
China and maps out all of the all of the
sea in that area. So countries that have borders along
that sea, like the Philippines or um well they're Southeast
Asian countries, are of Japan as well, obviously think this
(46:29):
is cutting into their peace of the Oceanic pie. So
the reason they think that is because due to the
U n Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries
have what's called an exclusive Economic zonner EAZY that goes
up to two d nautical miles or again for anybody
outside of the United States, Myanmar and Namibia seventy kilometers
(46:51):
off their coast or around their islands. So it is
true that China has been building artificial islands to reinforce
these claims. Anyway, we can talk about this for a while,
but the situation is clearly unsustainable and it's unfortunately not
a unique situation. Thanks so much for writing to us, Tyler,
(47:14):
And if you would like to write to us, you
can do it in the usual ways. You can do
it via Facebook, where we are stuff they don't want
you to know. You can do it via Twitter, where
we are at conspiracy stuff. We have an Instagram now
which we've been getting a little bit of love on,
which is lovely. We've been trying to post a little
bit more and I think we might just do a
post after we were finished recording the show. Yeah, and
(47:36):
so you know, we have a little caption contests and
things like that. It's a fun way to stay in touch. Um.
And if none of that does it for you, what
what else is there? Guys? Well, first of all, you
have to say it's conspiracy stuff show people. If you're
having a hard time finding it is conspiracy stuff, show yes.
And if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you just want to write to us with your suggestions,
because our best shows always begin in your brains and
(47:59):
then come out through our mouths. Somehow that sounds odd,
but that's how it happens. You can write to us.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com, m
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