OBJECTIONS TO PREPAID CARD DECLARATIONS AT FRONTIER ARE MISPLACED

Those experts who have been objecting to the proposed FinCEN regulation, that requires holders of prepaid/stored value cards to declare any amount on $10,000 at US borders, should wake up and small the roses. This method, whereby large amounts of criminal proceeds are boldly taken overseas each day, has been a major cash movement vehicle for years.

Item: One client reported that, when their company moved into new offices in Bermuda, a large box, filled with used (read: downloaded) prepaid cards was discovered on the premises. Apparently, the previous tenant used them to move major funds out of the US, and into the reinsurance capital of the financial world.

Item: One of the types of goods that dominates international trade-based money laundering is prepaid cards. This means that an obscene number of these cards are sold in global commerce, for prices that do not correspond to their market value. Does this mean that loaded cards are shipped, without disclosing that they hold value ? You bet it does.

Item: Many international bulk cash smuggling operations have employed stored value card transport, for the simple reason that such transfers have heretofore been quite legal.

Will those people in the financial world stop saying that monitoring of prepaid cards at US borders improperly invades privacy; what legitimate individual travels with more than $10,000 on a card, I ask ? This is a purely illegal tactic, and thus far, the money launderers employing prepaid cards are getting away with murder.