Cocaine Incorporated
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — True Crime
golfrumors — 7 years ago(October 14, 2018 03:33 AM)
I just finished watching Breaking Bad and wondered how accurate it is and Patrick Keefe in the New Yorker said it was pretty accurate as far as the drug trade goes:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-uncannily-accurate-depiction-of-the-meth-trade-in-breaking-bad
He linked to an interesting article of his about the Sinaloa Cartel:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?pagewanted=all
In Mexico they call the dissolved bodies in barrels "stew" but they use lye, not hydrochloric acid. Apparently the chemistry on the show is basically correct but often would require much larger quantities or some other tweak.
Precursor chemicals are a big topic on the show. From the New York Times article:
In 2007, Mexican authorities raided the home of Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese-Mexican businessman who is believed to have supplied meth-precursor chemicals to the cartel, and discovered $206 million, the largest cash seizure in history. And that was the money Zhenli held onto — he was an inveterate gambler, who once blew so much cash in Las Vegas that one of the casinos presented him, in consolation, with a Rolls-Royce. “How much money do you have to lose in the casino for them to give you a Rolls-Royce?” Tony Placido, the D.E.A. intelligence official, asked. (The astonishing answer, in Zhenli’s case, is $72 million at a single casino in a single year.) Placido also pointed out that, as a precursor guy, Zhenli was on the low end of the value chain for meth.
The cartels use ephedrine, not methylamine. -
Corwin — 7 years ago(October 14, 2018 03:52 AM)
People aren't often aware of the significant efforts of their countries in precursor chemical control.
That, and tightening up on money laundering, are how you really put the screws to the drug cartels. More than building physical walls. -
golfrumors — 7 years ago(October 14, 2018 04:16 AM)
I have a folder somewhere with articles about various major banks caught laundering drug money. Wachovia, Citigroup, HSBC, others. They agree not to do it again, pay a fine (less than they make from laundering drug money) and as is usual have the charges wiped from their records. So in the future when they are caught laundering again, as happens, it is like their first offense. And then there are so many smaller banks along the trafficking routes. The blogger GolemXIV has written about this:
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/05/money-laundering-and-drugs-in-romania-and-spain/
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2012/08/a-word-about-banks-and-the-laundering-of-drug-money/
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/04/money-laundering-and-the-moral-world-of-bankers/
Here is a funny Bloomberg headline from earlier this year:
Citi Forgot to Fix its Money Laundering Systems
. Whoops! -
Corwin — 7 years ago(October 14, 2018 04:27 AM)
Whoops indeed!
I worked in the drug control and anti-money laundering world for most of the first decade of this century, and i recall that it was always the same damn banks who would slip up and surprise, surprise!, get outed for aiding money laundering…I have to assume that it was a corporate culture in those recidivist financial institutions that needed fixing.