From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 13:13:39 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Cop Nation / Re: E-Peso's for tractors - McCaffrey on banking
In-Reply-To: <v0311070eb08a5388bb6a@[139.167.130.248]>
Message-ID: <34653BB8.4EF8@dev.null>
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Robert Hettinga wrote:
> From: "Blair Anderson" <blair@technologist.com>
> Subject: E-Peso's for tractors - McCaffrey on banking

>          U.S. drug czar appeals to banks to track laundering
>          By Anthony Boadle
> 
>          WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bankers, watch those ``smurf''
>          accounts.
...
>          Any innocent-looking person could be depositing a drug
>          baron's cash parceled into amounts smaller that the
>          $10,000 reporting threshhold to avoid suspicion, so get
>          to know your customer, they warned.

  Is it my imagination, or can the above be loosely translated as,
"_Everyone_ is a suspect!" 
 
>          ``We are losing contact with the enemy,'' the general
>          said. ''The government cannot follow laundering by
>          itself. You are going to have to help.''

  "I turned in my best customer, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!"
 
>          McCaffrey said the drug trade was moving into new areas
>          such as the securities industry to launder its profits.

  Looks like we're going to need some additional snitches in that
area. I wonder if the grade-school narc-trainers are going to advise
the children to go through their parent's finiancial statements while
they are searching for the parent's bag of pot.
  Perhaps those who fail to graduate from high-school can get a GED
later in life by turning in their spouse's parents to John Law.
  Can't get that promotion at the bank because the position requires 
an MBA? Ratting out your customers (guilty or not--and *you* are 
keeping the books) can get you valuable college credits.

>          Keely, a former New York City police commissioner,
>          warned that money laudering was corroding financial
>          institutions.

   ...but failed to mention if there was a 'down-side' as well.

>          ``It is the source and the product of a burgeoning
>          global parallel trading system that serves the emerging
>          criminal holding companies,'' he told the bankers and
>          lawyers.

  Which provides funding for a large number of secret government
agencies. 

>          The banking industry complained it had to file 12
>          million such reports in 1996, a time consuming and
>          costly activity.

  The alternative is to risk being indicted as a co-conspirator in your
customer's crimes.
  That reminds me...I bought a glass of lemonade from a neighborhood
kid's sidewalk stand today. I'd better go rat her out to the Treasury
Department and the DEA, so that when they show up on my doorstep they
will have a T-shirt for me, instead of handcuffs.

RatMonger