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. If you enjoyed this video, why not check out the video above?
