3/20/2024 0 Comments China money network![]() ![]() Once the cash was in the hands of the launderers, they contacted one among a network of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico. Lim’s involvement lasted an estimated 63 weeks between March 2016 and May 2017, during which time she and her other couriers picked up in excess of $25 million, prosecutors estimated. These were made in large cities including Chicago, New York and Atlanta. One of Gan’s associates, a Singaporean national named Seok Pheng Lim testified to prosecutors that she was coordinating several weekly pick-ups from representatives of Mexican criminal groups, made in cash ranging between $150,000 and $1 million, with an average of $500,000. Therefore, these launderers chose a scheme that ensured this would never happen. Large sums of money being transferred between China and the United States on a regular basis might raise suspicion. Wu’s scheme worked identically to Gan’s with the money never actually being transferred from China to the United States. Last September, Wu Xueyong was sentenced to five years in prison by a federal court in Virginia and agreed to forfeit over $4.2 million in laundered drug proceeds coming from cocaine trafficking in the United States. While this ring is the latest involving Chinese money launderers, it is not the only one to be uncovered. “Many of these brokers are also engaged in legitimate business, and use that business as cover for and to further money laundering activity,” said US attorneys in Gan’s sentencing memorandum. Gan owned a seafood business in Guadalajara, exporting jellyfish to China, according to Reuters. Long was the purchasing manager for his family’s toy and clock business, selling products in Mexico, where he had investments in hotels and restaurants. These men presented themselves as legitimate businessmen and had little to no entanglements with the law. Pan Haiping has been arrested in Mexico and is awaiting extradition to the United States. Long was arrested in February 2020 at Vancouver airport in Canada before being extradited to the United States on charges related to Gan’s. They ensured that no money was ever transferred between China and the United States, helping them to avoid detection. Both men are believed to have been working with Gan, handling the drug money proceeds received in Chicago and ensuring their laundering through Chinese bank accounts. ![]() Two other key figures have emerged since Gan’s arrest, two Chinese citizens, Pan Haiping and Long Huanxin. ![]() “The defendant was part of a recent phenomenon in which a relatively small network of Chinese money brokers based in Mexico have come to dominate international money laundering markets,” stated Assistant US Attorneys Sean J.B. Gan has since become the most well-known, but far from the only, Chinese money launderer connected to some of Latin America’s most dangerous criminal groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel. In 2018, Gan handled approximately $534,206 in drug money before being arrested at Los Angeles Airport in November 2018, during a layover while flying from Hong Kong to Mexico. In late April, a US-based Chinese citizen, Gan Xianbing, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for running a scheme where money from Mexican criminal groups was picked up in Chicago, transferred to bank accounts in China and then ultimately sent back to Mexico. InSight Crime looks at how colossal amounts of money are being laundered, the seemingly legitimate businessmen behind it all and why US prosecutors are stumped about how to proceed. But the locations of drug-money pickups began changing from Mexican American enclaves in Little Village, Cicero and Aurora to areas near Chinese businesses, according to Giuffre.While the involvement of Chinese money-laundering rings in handling drug proceeds from Mexico is nothing new, a number of recent court cases in the United States have revealed crucial information about how these schemes work. Till then, the launderers were usually Mexicans. Mark Giuffre, a retired DEA supervisor who works for the Jensen Hughes security-risk consulting firm, says agents in Chicago started noticing Chinese nationals were laundering money for Mexican drug cartels in late 2015. Such schemes have disguised tens of millions of dollars of drug proceeds into what are supposed to look like legitimate business transactions, according to law-enforcement sources and court documents. He was part of a network of Chinese nationals who were using complex financial schemes to launder Mexican cartel cash, federal authorities say. Han’s now awaiting trial on money-laundering charges in Chicago. They also searched the Riverside home where he was living and seized about $1.2 million they found hidden in the ceiling there, according to court documents. ![]()
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