Mexican cartels doing their banking in Houston

Houston Chronicle:

Not only is Houston a major center for Mexican cartels’ smuggling drugs and weapons, but banks and financial institutions in the nation’s fourth largest city’s also are targets for gangsters trying to hide millions of dollars in profits, according to a White House report released Wednesday.

Underworld organizations, particularly those aligned with the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, have major bases of operation in Houston and Corpus Christi, continues the report, prepared for the Obama administration by the National Drug Intelligence Center.

There are 201 international drug and money-laundering organizations in a 16-county region that stretches from Kenedy County, in deep South Texas, to just this side of the Louisiana border, according to the report.

The criminal gangs range in size from five players to 1,150, the report continues.

Stan Furce, director of a coalition of state and federal drug fighters in the region, known as the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, said the city’s large, diverse population and proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border make it ripe.

“I do know that we are more vulnerable,” he said. “You can come in and out of this city easily by car, rail or plane, and nobody is going to look at you just because of who you are.”

Sweeping up the Gulf Coast from Kenedy to the Louisiana border, with Houston at its center, is a key distribution area for illicit drugs sneaked into the United States from Mexico and headed for the Midwest, as well as all along the East Coast, according to the report.

With that distribution comes cash, and cartels are offered a potential means to launder the money by using traditional financial institutions and money-service businesses in Houston.

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I think banking drug money is a good way to lose it. That is why so much of the money is carried back in cash. The money mules don't leave a paper trail unless the cash is slipping out of its hiding places. If they bank the money it creates a paper trail that is tied to the cartel making it easier for law enforcement to trace the source and recipients.

The report also mentions the gun trade which is something that needs to be dealt with, but it is not the criminal insurgents major source of arms. To get the automatic weapons and RPGs, they go to the black market or steal them from the Mexican army.