Julie Shemitz

I have watched The Wire.

It's a little hard for me to watch because it's kind of, it's too close to home, you know?

The money laundering side is a window into the larger organization.

You know, if you want to pursue drug traffickers, you could be on the street following people around, watching them do deals, watching them pass drugs to people and picking up money.

But it doesn't have any meaning until you actually...

start to see how the money that they are handling is getting to the people who actually own those drugs.

There are many, many, many Chinese nationals in the United States who need dollars.

They need dollars to function.

They need dollars to go to school.

They need dollars to buy real estate.

They need dollars to live.

And...

They may have resources in China, financial resources, but those resources aren't really available to them.

And so it suddenly became imperative for people to find another way to move their money into the United States.

When a Chinese national in the United States gets money from a money broker from China, they pay a commission on it and they pay a hefty commission on it.

And this enables the Chinese underground banking organizations to charge less to the narcotics trafficking organizations for whom they are laundering those funds.

Exactly.

Typically, the percentage was anywhere from 5% to 10% to even more.

And the Chinese started charging 1% to 2% to move money.

Yeah.