How Mexican Narcos Use Remittances to Wire U.S. Drug Profits Home

[Judi Lynn]

By Morogris 8/20/2023 12:30:00 PM
By Diego Ore from Reuters



Express Cellular in Columbus, Ohio, as shown in a Google Street View image from May 2019. The shop served as a front for laundering drug money via remittances, according to U.S. federal prosecutors.


Drug cartels are using remittances (Spanish: remesas) – money transfers favored by migrant workers – to send illicit earnings back to Mexico. They’re hiring armies of people on both sides of the border to move small sums that are difficult to trace to narcotics kingpins, authorities say. Reuters visited Sinaloa, where some residents admitted to cashing remittances for the Sinaloa Cartel.


A Mexican mother walked into a bank in her home city of Culiacán in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where an $8,000 remittance from the United States was waiting. She withdrew the funds in local currency, then strolled across town and deposited nearly all of it into accounts at two different banks.

Money sent home by migrant workers is a lifeline for millions of Mexicans. But the woman had never met the person who wired her the funds, nor the owners of the accounts where she took the cash. What she did know: The deal had been carefully arranged by the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s largest drug trafficking groups, to repatriate profits from U.S. drug sales back to Mexico disguised as a routine remittance.

Her cut: $230 worth of Mexican pesos.

It was the start of easy money for the woman, who said she previously had struggled to make ends meet cleaning houses. Recalling that day in April 2014 for Reuters, she estimated she had earned some $17,000 over the years recruiting others into the scheme and cashing remittances totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars – but never too much or too often, so as to avoid scrutiny by banking authorities. She said a neighbor got her into the game, and that she had never met her bosses in person.

“Everything was by phone,” she said, “and the phone numbers changed every time.”

The woman showed Reuters WhatsApp messages on her phone that she said were from traffickers coordinating her remittance pickups and drop-offs. One from early 2022 said: “They are waiting for you outside. They know who you are. Give them the money.

More:
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2023/08/how-mexican-narcos-use-remittances-to.html