How Drug Lords Use Gold To Launder Money

Pablo Escobar, Joaquin Guzman, Dario Antonio… The unending list of drug cartels goes on and on. For these people, money is obviously not an issue. But they always have a big problem; transferring huge sums of money without raising any suspicion. So how do they go about this? By using suitcases? Or saving money in the bank? Actually, they launder money to disguise the source of their wealth by various means. Then they are free to live a luxurious life without having federal agencies on their watch.

What’s the point of burying billions of dollar when a lot of that money is being eaten by rats? For a very long time, the most prevalent money laundering method these drug cartels used was by investing in the gold business. In the most recent addition to a series of gold-based money-laundering schemes, a criminal organization in Colombia is converting illegal currency into tainted gold. In order to conceal the fact that it is not pure, the tainted gold is either sold under the pretense that it was obtained in Colombia or is fashioned into jewelry locally. Ultimately, it is important to tell the tale of how drug lords hide their money.

Chapters:
0:00 - 1:10 Prologue
1:11 - 6:03 Colombian Drug Cartels
6:04 - 7:18 Contraband Smuggling Of Gold In Colombia
7:19 - 9:37 Sinaloa Cartel
9:38 - 12:19 Digging Into Dirty Gold Across The Americas
12:20 - 14:24 Illegal Gold Mining Among Latino Americans
14:25 - 16:24 Laundering In South Florida
16:25 - 21:57 A Miami Herald Investigation