There is more money here
than we could spend in 10 lifetimes.
I certainly can't launder it.
That's pretty realistic too.
You're going to have to have a lot of small businesses
to run through millions of dollars.
Hi, I'm Jerri Williams,
and I was a special agent with the FBI for 26 years.
I investigated economic crime, financial fraud.
I'm also the author of "FBI Myths and Misconceptions:
A Manual for Armchair Detectives."
Today we're going to look at money-laundering clips
in movies and judge how realistic they are.
Marty: Money-laundering 101.
Say you come across a suitcase with 5 million bucks in it.
What would you buy?
A yacht? A mansion? A sports car?
Now, his money-laundering 101 is a little right,
but he has some things that are wrong.
Marty: The IRS won't let you buy anything of value with it.
The IRS will let you spend as much money as you have,
but they want to know where you got it from.
And they also want to make sure that they get their cut.
So, if a criminal or a bad guy goes in
and wants to lay down a million dollars for a home,
that is going to be reported to the IRS.
I think it's called Form 8300.
And if they're suspicious about the activity,
it's also going to be reported to FinCEN.
Marty: You gotta age it up.
Crumple it, drag it through the dirt.
You don't need to run it through a wash machine.
But I guess if a criminal has some illegal source of money
and it's coming in brand-new, crisp bills
and he's trying to pretend
that it's part of his normal revenue from a business,
I guess he would want to make it look like
it has been handled,
but I've never heard of that before.
Marty: Next, you need a cash business.
This clip is very realistic.
Strip clubs and casinos, restaurants and bars,
any type of business where cash is being used and transacted
are just the perfect kind of businesses
to do money laundering.
Marty: That mixture goes from an American bank
to a bank from any country
that doesn't have to listen to the IRS.
It then goes into a standard checking account,
and violà.
All you need is access to one of over 3 million terminals.
Because your work is done.
Well, your work is done
once the money is in the banking system.
It doesn't need to be sent anywhere else.
It's now, you know, clean, legitimate money.
The only thing that he doesn't talk about
is the fact that when you deposit that money,
if it's over $10,000,
you have to fill out what is called a CTR,
or a currency transaction report.
And this is required of any bank.
And, of course, on that form,
you have to indicate where the money came from.
I would give this clip about a 7 out of 10.
I think they got a lot of it right
about the general, basic part of money laundering.
Steve: And Gacha had the most successful emerald mine
of all time.
He would inject bad stones with oil to make them shiny
and have his friends in Miami
buy the emeralds with drug money
and give them as gifts to hookers in town.
And this is another example of money laundering.
If no one is looking to put a value
on those gems or diamonds or whatever
that you're exchanging for cash
to legitimize your illegal funds,
then, you know, on paper it appears that
a legal transaction has occurred.
Steve: And that's what they did.
This is very realistic, and it's based on the truth.
Drug dealers in South America
did get to a point where they had so much money
that they buried it.
Rumor is that that money is still buried someplace,
and people are constantly searching to find it.
Steve: They hid it in caletas,
hiding places in walls and ceilings.
I was involved in a search once.
All of the cash was hidden in the floorboard of the van.
It was pretty exciting to come across
thousands and thousands of dollars,
although tedious to have to count.
I would give this clip a 10 out of 10.
It's pretty authentic.
There's been nobody that I'm aware of that has hidden
as much cash as Escobar has,
and he's legendary.
I didn't know what else to do.
I tried weighing it.
I figured one bill of any denomination weighs a gram.
There are 454 grams to a pound.
Money is handled on a regular basis,
especially in drug dealing,
and so all of that is going to
make each particular bill
weigh differently than it did
when it was a nice, crisp, clean, fresh bill.
So there's really no way of determining
how much money is there just by weighing it.
I just stack it up, keep it dry, spray it for silverfish.
Most of the time the money is just stored in a bag.
I have heard so many times about
drug dealers or criminals
who have gathered money together
and stored it in a place only to come back later
to find out that it's water-damaged,
that it's rotting away,
that it's been eaten by animals or insects.
There is more money here
than we could spend in 10 lifetimes.
I certainly can't launder it, not with 100 car washes.
That's pretty realistic too.
You're going to have to have a lot of small businesses
to run through millions of dollars.
I think I'd give it a 10 out of 10.
I think it's pretty realistic,
the issue of having too much money to spend
and the way it's being stored.
Where does this check go?
Montana Realty Company.
This is the point where the money laundering occurs.
It turns into money laundering
running it through a realty company.
And so this is a pretty authentic part of the scene.
I have heard of many businesses
that have been used as fronts for criminal activity,
and it's kind of sweet and funny
that many of them use the names of their spouses,
their wives, or their children.
It's kind of sweet until
the federal government comes in and confiscates.
All right, freeze!
Get 'em up! Get your hands up!
Officer: Put your hands against the wall, turn around.
Let your undercover agent or your informant
get out of the scene before you come and make an arrest.
There is no rush.
You know the money's there,
you know the transaction's been made,
you have the camera, the video of everything.
Officer: Put 'em up against the wall.
You're under arrest for violation of the RICO statute.
So, he mentions RICO here.
RICO is the Racketeering Influenced
Corrupt Organization Act,
and it is used when you are investigating
a large organization.
You see that eye there on the clock?
Say, "Hi, honey."
I think they could have done a better job
[laughs] of disguising it.
I would wonder if there was a camera
being poked out of this clock.
Most of the time I have hidden audio equipment
on the cooperating witness
or the undercover agent's person.
You know, a beeper or in a cellphone
or in a book.
Many times lamps are used
just because they're at the right height
and they're very effective tools for hidden cameras.
I would rate it about a 7 or 8.
I think it's pretty realistic
when it comes to the exchange of funds.
You know, I have problems with
the fact that they're sitting there counting the money,
you know, for hours on end.
Let me ask you something.
What about her family, right?
How would anybody think they're gonna get through
the security system at most airports
with money like that strapped all over their body?
Before we became much more security-conscious
here in the United States, anyway,
the TSA, you know, I would still think would've caught that.
Nowadays you're going to have to go through a body scanner
as well as all your carry-on luggage.
I mean, they all got Swiss passports, right?
The woman and her family
are what we would call money mules.
People that are being paid to transfer illegal sums.
A money mule can also be paid
just to open up bank accounts
and then make those deposits and transfers
in their own name on behalf of the criminal.
It's very common that a criminal
will ask a family member or a friend to do this,
but they can also just pay a stranger.
I mean, she's got parents, she's got a brother, right?
Brother's got a wife, that's five f---ing people.
Six, seven trips, boom.
One of the things that really bothers me about this scene
is that I know this particular case
that this movie is made about,
and it was an investment fraud.
The money was already in the banking system.
So I'm not even sure where all this cash came from.
It was not a cash business.
I hope this is a scene that is set for comedy,
because it's pure comedy.
There are parts of the whole movie that are pretty good.
I mean, it is based on a real case,
but these scenes, not good at all.
I would rate it as low as a 1 or a 2.
Immigration official: I can confirm that he left Sweden
on a private jet that landed in Paris last week.
Transferring funds from an account that she doesn't own
into her own account.
This is what people think about
when they think about money laundering.
But, in fact, it's not money laundering.
It's identity fraud, it's wire fraud, it's embezzlement.
I have a number of accounts
at Bank of Kroenfeld, Cayman Islands.
I'd like to transfer those accounts
and convert them to bonds.
Naturally, you have the clearing codes.
Naturally.
How many accounts will you be transferring?
30.
Because of digital fingerprinting and facial recognition,
I think it's becoming harder and harder
to do identity fraud through disguises.
So, you know, she's getting away with this,
but the documentation, her passport,
and other types of identification
must be able to be verified.
Reporter: Where fugitive financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom is:
here in this Caribbean island's --
Now it's money laundering, because she has taken funds
and she has disguised and concealed them.
She's taken money
that was in the banking system
and she's transferred those funds
and converted them into bonds.
How many of these would you like to convert for deposit?
All 50 into five accounts.
These counterfeit bonds, I assume they're counterfeit,
to a Swiss banker.
And so they're going to have to have
the appropriate weight and the appropriate stamps
and the appropriate official markings
that these types of bonds would normally have.
And it's a criminal act of the banker
if they do not verify the identity of the person.
Or if they believe that those funds
were part of a criminal activity,
the banker would not accept those funds in the bank,
because doing so would also be a criminal act.
The things that you hear about Swiss bank secrecy
has to do with once those funds
have been legitimately deposited.
But banking in Switzerland
still works just like any other bank around the world.
They still want to know who you are.
I think that I would give it probably a 10 out of 10.
You know the drill, everybody gets a burn bag.
Into it you put anything
with Barry Seal's face or name on it.
Barry: Come on, boys, we gotta move.
I can tell you watching this just makes me so happy.
There are some agents in the FBI
who would rather poke their eyes out with a stick
than to have to go through documents and papers.
Of course, now a lot of this stuff is going to be online.
This still goes on, but it's a lot easier, I would imagine,
to destroy evidence that's online than it is,
you know, boxes and boxes of paper like this.
Agent: Seal! DEA!
Back away from the truck with your hands in the air.
I have been in many situations,
especially during searches,
where we come in and identify ourselves
and immediately have to tell people to stop.
Agent: ATF!
Drop your weapons!
Whoa, whoa, whoa, DEA!
ATF! Put your guns down!
It's cool! Everybody's friends here!
Now, this particular case happened
before the late 1980s.
Maybe something like this could happen,
but it doesn't happen anymore.
Not since they created what is called HIDTA
so that they can deconflict or prevent
all of those agencies
coming up on the same type of case together.
You don't want to have any law-enforcement agency
or law-enforcement officer or agent harmed
because of friendly fire.
So I would rate this movie clip about a 5.
The last half, when we had all of these
law-enforcement agencies converging
at the same time, no, that's not very realistic.
A last-minute addition to your catalog.
Lot No. 277 A, oil on canvas,
signed by the artist.
"The Road to Damascus" by Jonathan Graziosi.
This part of the clip is pretty funny.
Art is in the eyes of the beholder,
and it's harder for authorities
to be able to determine
what is the value of art.
And unlike other businesses,
the art dealer does not have to complete
that CTR, like we talked about,
to let the IRS know
that this transaction has been made.
50,000, anyone? No?
Oh, well, too bad then.
Money laundering doesn't usually occur
at an auction like this.
Each art in an auction would have the provenance,
where you know exactly who is the artist,
how much this work of art has sold for before.
It has a trail of how much it's worth,
how much it's been valued in the past.
We have $50,000.
When you have a single purchaser,
then that again is when the radar goes off,
that this might be a suspicious activity here.
Quite a painting you have for yourself, sir.
Thank you.
Somebody at that level should be suspicions
that a painting of that quality
would sell for this amount.
Now he's part of the conspiracy,
and so if I were able to give him any advice,
I'd tell him this is the point
where he needs to come clean to the FBI.
I would rate this scene about a 7 or an 8.
I think they got a lot of the things right
about using art in a money-laundering scheme.
Thanks for watching.
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