I always thought of terrorism and drugdealing in simplistic terms of what happens in the street. Now I understand how the system works and why our fight is so unsuccessful.
What I learned:
Our laws change slowly in response to rapid innovation by the traffickers and terrorists.
Horse-and-buggy standards for banks like "know your customer" are pointless in a modern world economy.
The worldwide supply of drugs is variegated and impossible to control. As a result, our approach to fighting drugs by cooperating with drug-producing countries is stupid. My guess is that a bread-and-butter approach of customs inspections and death penalty for dealers and launderers would work better. The mindset of modern law enforcement is dead wrong.
As icing on the cake, it was interesting to learn that the Afghanis, Arabs, and Iranians who attack America for our moral degeneration are number 1 in heroin production and smuggling.
A few disappointments:
Richards barely treated terrorists. If he had, his book would have had more mass appeal.
Some of the explanations would have been clearer with flow diagrams.
I still don't understand why layering is so effective. It sounds as if a simple computer trace would unpeel the layers.
This book is not light reading. But if you really want to know how the world works, it's worth the effort!
Extremely well written, it is a well flowing, very easy read that is both highly informative and enlightening. The book provides a very extensive and detailed examination of organized criminal enterprises engaged in international financial crime. The book fully details the specific steps of the placement, layering, and integration stages of money laundering as well as fully itemizing the techniques and uses of non-financial institutions (casinos, securities et al.) in money laundering. The expanded international focus documents a very detailed and thorough examination of the scope of global financial crime. The book fully integrates an expanse of information on banking, money laundering and cybercrime basics, international criminal organizations - in both a national and international context - in a manner that is easily understood by the reader.
As a police officer, I would highly recommend this book as a "must have" for the reference shelf of federal, state, local or corporate based investigators engaged in financial crimes inquiries and analysis. For the non-professional who is interested in organized crime of a more cerebral nature, the book is more than worth the purchase price.
As a college instructor (Introduction to Economic Crime Investigation at Herkimer County Community College; Herkimer, NY), this book in invaluable to the both the instructor and the student engaged in a comprehensive review of money laundering actvities.
As a side note, Mr. Richards also gives an excellent presentation and lecture on the topics and subject matter covered in his book.