Matthew Cox

Right.

And so you can look at every opportunity.

in Mexico as a money laundering operation.

And this is running 24 hours a day.

Billions of dollars, because not only are they legitimately getting their money into bank accounts, but then they're putting them into assets that are ultimately going to just appreciate.

And so that's the structure of how it worked in Mexico.

Now, the reason why it becomes important for our discussion is because the money laundering services are expensive.

Right.

You're paying 10%, 12% of your capital.

Later on, when you see the Chinese have revolutionized it, the fees have plummeted.

It's essentially putting a lot of the indigenous Mexican operations in jeopardy.

So with respect to Mexico, the drug proceeds generated by the cartel operative here in the United States are, for the most part...

collected in Los Angeles, transported down to the border area where Mexican nationals would take possession of the money, run it into Guadalajara or its surface.

That was the old way that's still being used today, but it was much more prevalent back in my era.

Beginning in the 1980s with Operation Polar Cap and continuing through Operation Front Runner in 2024.

Los Angeles has been at the heart of the money laundering operations here in the United States.

Long before underground banking, Chinese banking networks began laundering Mexican drug proceeds in 2017.

The strategy most utilized by the Mexicans is a scheme known as the Black Market Peso Exchange.

The Black Market Peso Exchange is a form of trade-based money laundering.

In this scheme, a cartel operative in Los Angeles arranges to sell U.S.