DEA ARROGANCE JUST COST AMERICA ONE OF ITS MOST VALUABLE TOOLS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST DOMESTIC MONEY LAUNDERING

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration  (DEA) has just suspended the lion's share of its highly successful domestic airport Transportation (Bulk Cash) Interdiction program, after the Office of the Inspector General conducted an extensive investigation, and filed a scathing report. Entitled DOJ OIG Releases Management Alert identifying Concerns with the DEA's Transportation Interdiction Activities,  the report detailed a number of major issues the agency's operation of its program, right after which the program was immediately suspended.

The report, which found that the vast majority of the bulk cash seizures, which have amounted to billions of dollars, did not stop money laundering of the proceeds of crime, but resulted in the detention of legitimate cash in the possession of the civilian population, after which the tedious and time-consuming administrative and legal process they had to endure to recover their assets, did not serve either the public of the ends of justice. In truth and in fact, it was a distraction from the mission, which is to seize criminal proceeds.

The OIG found that:

(1) Individuals administering the program often totally and completely failed to properly document their seizures, a fatal flaw which hampered successful operations, even through this deficiency was previously pointed out to the DEA by OIG, which asserted that it wasn't being done. The truth was it was being ignored, and those leaders responsible for making that statement should be held accountable.

(2) DEA training for properly conducting the seizures, which was a requirement, has been suspended;  again OIG had been incorrectly assured that it was being done. In fact, it has been terminated in 2023.

Forget about the Constitutional issues with the public, consider the impact of the new policy, which requires that there be an active investigation in progress, before an interdiction can be conducted. The vast majority of seizures occur outside an active investigation; this means the program is essentially dead on arrival.

Allow me to explain why money launderers, drug traffickers and all the other categories of criminals engage in domestic bulk cash smuggling, which is not illegal under US law. Money launderers often move bulk cash, which constitute the proceeds of crime, to locations in the Continental United States where they can more easily place it into the American financial structure, for one reason or another. In  some cases, they have co-conspirators who have a specific method of Placement of cash in banks or NBFIs; in others, they take advantage of legal loopholes or weaknesses in the financial system. They depend upon a specific place to dump  that cash, and therefore they must transport it, generally using aviation, although they can use surface transportation, which is often considered too slow to be efficient.

The DEA has now lost that valuable tool, where using profiling, it interdicts bulk cash en route, which takes a bite out of crime, and hurts the war on money laundering. Someone in the DEA leadership allowed this, and there should be accountability for that intentional act.