WHEN CRIMINALS IGNORE THEIR MONEY LAUNDERERS, THEIR MISTAKES END UP ASSISTING COMPLIANCE OFFICERS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES

One of the biggest problems that money launderers face, regarding their criminal clients, is failure to follow their instructions. Wealthy criminal clients often become extremely arrogant, due to their newfound assets, and often question their laundryman's decisions, even if they have little or no background in finance or the dark realities of working in opaque tax havens, where the players often choose to take advantage of criminals, because they cannot go to the authorities.

In my personal case, one group of drug smuggling clients having made many millions in illicit profits, ignored my advice to steer clear of lawyers and banks in Switzerland, because I judged the risks of loss to be too high, even back in the freewheeling 1980s. They quietly move a significant portion of their criminal profits there, only to later find that unethical lawyers diverted some of their money to their own pockets. When clients think they know more than their laundryman, because they are full of themselves due to success, they often make major errors, which is an opportunity for law enforcement, as well as compliance officers, to discover their activities, and seize or freeze their funds.

My clients, whose leaders chose to inform on yours truly and the organization's accountant, to reduce their ultimate sentences, found later to their dismay that I revealed to law enforcement, in response after my arrest, sufficient evidence about their operations, to afford the Swiss authorities, in coordination with the US, to seize and forfeit millions of illicit profits held in Swiss banks. Never cross your money launderer because he or she literally knows where the bodies are buried, financial or otherwise.