Drug Seizure Highlights Ease of Smuggling Drug Cash

Most families living in suburbia hope there isn’t a drug house looming around the corner. In the case of an upscale neighborhood near Seven Lakes High School in Katy, Texas, federal agents kicked in the door of a home in 2008 where they found cocaine, handguns and $1,379,510 in cash bundled and waiting for a short trip to the Mexican border.

A Chron article reported on the find, including the ledgers agents found indicating the Gulf Cartel had already used the Katy operation to move $200 million in drug proceeds south of the border.

Low tech methods to move drug money appear to be working. Mexican and Colombian drug cartels are increasingly turning to this method of boxing up the cash and stashing it in a truck or car to drive it across one of the many border crossings.

According to current and former law enforcement officials, more agents and equipment should be devoted to the search for billions of dollars hidden in vehicles headed south, in addition to infiltrating the bulk smuggling operations. Considering the national debt the government has already incurred, can they afford this investment?

“It goes back to resources,“ said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, in the Chron. “They don’t have enough inspectors to inspect all the loads they need to inspect going northbound. The priority’s been northbound, and, obviously, it makes it more difficult to impede the movement of bulk cash into Mexico.”

In recent months, there have been a series of large cash seizures in Houston, El Paso and Mexico City, but reports out of the Justice Department show that drug trafficking cartels are getting as much as $40 billion in profits out of the country every year.