Posted on 08/03/2015 10:55:31 AM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Just outside the Blue Bay Diner, an undercover officer for the Tri-County Task Force opened the trunk as a man clutching a cardboard box approached the car, tossed the container inside, then disappeared on foot in the neighborhood in Queens, N.Y. In the box: $296,375 in drug cash.
Within hours, the money was on a plane bound for Florida.
By the next day, the cache was delivered in the gleaming SunTrust lobby in the heart of Bal Harbour for what was the final and most important part of the money-laundering deal: depositing the cash and secretly wiring it to a money broker working for the drug cartels.
The place: Panama.
Despite a firm U.S. policy against police moving illegal money offshore — especially into countries on the State Department’s trouble list for laundering — the task force police officers did so anyway with the bank’s help.
The arrangement five years ago was just the beginning.
Over the next three years, SunTrust became a key ally in the task force’s ability to move millions into banks in more than a dozen countries, including China, while the officers broke all the rules to generate deals with criminal groups, the Miami Herald found.
Time and again, the bank helped the undercover unit consisting of Bal Harbour police and the Glades County Sheriff's Office move money through a pipeline of banks — some as far away as Singapore — in what was supposed to be a sting operation to infiltrate criminal organizations.
The officers turned SunTrust into an operations base, hauling duffel bags stuffed with drug cash into the facility, sorting the money with tellers and converging in the manager’s office for meetings.
To facilitate the operation, the task force enlisted the help of Ivan Morales, the 56-year-old branch manager. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Your tax dollars at work.
Total government corruption...
No waiting!.................
This it what one would expect to go on in Mexico City or Somalia, not Florida.
We need to make America great again.
I suspect this guy had a hand in it.......................
I lived in South Florida during the Cocaine Wars of the late 70s' early 80's. There was not a piece of paper currency in circulation that was not contaminated with coke.....................
: )
RB I remember those times. Drug money built a lot of the Miami we see today. Still does!
Gotta wonder how much of that ca$h made it to the officers involved.
Back in the 80’s, the Broward County Sheriff’s Dept. manufactured it’s own crack. Good times.
Brand new currency comes straight out of the federal reserve banks with detectable levels of coke on them, so that doesn't mean much.
Why am I not surprised?.......................
Because you're paying attention?
The FED claims it's because the counting machines are "contaminated" by previous money run through them. Personally, I believe it's to manufacture probable cause.
Anyone with a bunch of cash on their person is going to cause a 'drug dog' to alert.
Yet another reason to oppose the war on drugs.
Or maybe the people working the night shift have dirty hands?........................
APB for a Montana, Tony? With a goofy John Travolta lookin sidekick? Didn’t think so. d;^)
Government sanctions gangs. The police haul the loot. This is the result of the war on drugs. Same as prohibition. Organized crime and criminal police.
Buying an entire police department is a trivial expense for a drug cartel.
Would be nice if they received consecutive life sentences without parole.
But since they’re police, they’ll get a light sentence.
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