Matthew Cox

So that's what led to the counterfeit credit cards.

Because up until that point, I was manufacturing credit cards, but I wasn't doing it on scale.

I was just doing it for us to be able to use, you know, to go fill up the boat with gas.

Why didn't we talk about this in the book?

Because you didn't want to.

You wanted to make me look bad, scumbag.

An entire dimension that you didn't want to capture.

I discussed the bank fraud with you, passport fraud, and you just really shortchanged me.

Yeah, well, that's my bad.

That's why I come off as such an unsympathetic person.

And so anyhow, that was an illustration of how you move money, whether it's through ethnic groups or whether it's through the Chinese.

And so this is the segue now for the black market peso exchange in China.

Well, as indicated earlier, trade-based money laundering schemes have been utilized now for decades in Mexico.

Where it transitioned into the Chinese context is by the early 2000s, a Mexican drug lord named Nacho Cordonel.

Oh, that's Nacho?

That's Nacho.

I always thought he would be older.

Nacho Cordonel formed a business relationship with Armando Valencia, where the two of them took the production of synthetics to what was essentially an industrial scale.

Well, the purchase of the precursors...

was done through, of course, the Chinese.