WE ANALYZE MONEY LAUNDERING TRADECRAFT OF $33m FUGITIVE BOGUS CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY JASON SHENK

We have conducted an analysis of the tactics employed by fugitive "Christian Missionary" JASON GERALD SHENK, who defrauded charitable organizations, and private donors of over thirty three million US Dollars,  while purporting to prepare, print and deliver bibles and Christian literature to recipients in the Peoples' Republic of China over a ten year period, using public records, in an effort to demonstrate the lengths to which international money launderers will go to clean and secrete the proceeds of crime. Shenk, who renounced his American citizenship, has disappeared abroad. He reportedly defrauded Amish and Mennonite charities, and is believed to have been a member of one of those groups.

Jason Gerald Shenk

While most financial crime journalists generally limit their coverage to the reporting of facts, we here concentrate upon analysis and commentary, so that compliance officers will learn from, and remember never to underestimate, the dark skills displayed by fraudsters employing advanced tradecraft.

First of all, Shenk must have had expert advice from experienced international money launderers, as he chose the most obscure and remote tax havens/offshore financial centers to both form his shell corporations, and to bank his illicit funds:

1. CONNECT ASIA BV: Samoa corporation, with bank accounts in Singapore. 

2. CLF ASIA LIMITED: British Virgin Islands corp, with Hong Kong bank accounts.

3. AUTUMNVALE GROUP LIMITED: Marshall Islands corporation, Singapore bank accounts.

4. He also had a number of US companies and LLCs, accounts at Bank of America & Citibank, in Georgia and North Carolina. Those accounts forwarded money abroad, and made "investments," which appear to be laundering operations.

In addition to reportedly transferring much of the money to bank accounts at ABN Amro Bank in Singapore and Hong Kong, Shenk:

A. Used $7m to run his family farm in the US.

B. Bought $850,000 in stock of a private nuclear energy company.

C. Bought $16m in insurance policies.

D. Bought 16 insurance policies with $4m.

E. Bought real estate in Santiago, Chile with $320,000. 

The fact that he was able to operate his fraud for a decade, permanently left the Continental United States, and remains a fugitive attests to the adequacy of the "professional" advice he received from his laundrymen. This is the type of externally legitimate, though career criminal, client that typically present the greatest challenge for compliance officers. He pushed an extraordinary amount of money through American bank accounts, and the fact that his operation was totally bogus was never discovered by his bankers, nor their compliance departments. Why he was never exposed by them we cannot say, but this is what a successful operation looks like. Govern yourselves accordingly.