In today’s column, Cecil says, “In one infamous smurfing case a ring of middle-aged women placed over $25 million of Florida drug money into assorted California banks.”
I realize this was 10 years ago, but a cursory googling didn’t turn up any hits for this story (for me anyway).
Link: How would I go about laundering money? - The Straight Dope
Can someone help?
Got it. This was the “Grandma Mafia” case, even though the women were in their 40s:
FTR, that was $5m in drug money, and $20M in FBI-sting money.
More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/10/24/white-powder-attracts-prospectors-in-california-gold-rush-of-82/5488d953-cacb-41c1-a3f6-057a6624b0f5/
… One major cocaine case set for trial later this year, known to attorneys as the “Grandma Mafia” case, involved “middle-aged, middle-class ladies, some of them grandmothers, who wanted to make a lot of money,” said Perry.
One of them, 46-year-old Barbara Mouzin, had been working in a Florida clothing business when she allegedly became involved in currency exchange and then drug trafficking between the United States and Colombia, Perry said. In a telephone conversation taped by investigators, he said, a colleague of hers said the clothing business was doing so poorly that he was glad they had the sideline.
Mouzin allegedly approached a banker in southern California and asked him to accept large amounts of cash without filing a currency transaction report, a classic form of money “laundering” that allows drug sellers to avoid detection by drug investigators and the Internal Revenue Service, Perry said.
He said the banker contacted authorities and in the end Mouzin was dealing with government agents posing as launderers. In just eight months, Perry said, Mouzin allegedly handled $25 million, in deposits ranging up from $70,000. …
Upon further review…looks like all $25M was drug money; the FBI sting was a fake bank they got the perps to use for laundering, not Fed money they got the perps to accept and launder.
We regret the error.
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