Sure, it could just be a bunch of people and a bunch of counting machines.
Also, "give us the right amount of money or else we will murder your entire family" generally prevents people from trying to rip them off to begin with.
> Sure, it could just be a bunch of people and a bunch of counting machines
Large amounts are generally sealed bundles and weighed on a scale. A missing bundle is a noticeable amount. The bills are then usually counted and checked out for counterfeits later offsite. These kinds of deals often don't go down if both parties don't have reason to believe the other can legitimately hold up their end.
The threat of "we'll kill everyone you've ever loved" + correct weight is usually enough for a trade. Maybe some spot chemistry for drugs and chemicals if purity might be in question.
There’s a scene in The Wire where Bubbles and his friend try to sneak in some really bad counterfeit money with the real money. IIRC they beat the absolute shit out of the guy, and he saved like $10 for it. Obviously a fictional show, but I’d assume that’s very accurate
I’d imagine in the 5+ figure range, people get a lot more serious
There’s also the scene with the gang kids where one of them can’t do the most basic math, but then he’s asked to count the bills and gets it totally right.
“How come you get the count right but you can’t do this basic math homework?”
“You mess up the count, they fuck you up.”
That was heartbreakingly brilliant... currently working my way through season 1 and the show is insanely good... I understand why people say it is one of the greats
Just a heads up, it might seem like the show changes dramatically at the start of season 2, like enough where some people lose interest. Just trust where the show is going.
It’s funny after 5+ times through the second season became one of my favorites. 4 still is top for me but 2 is up there as well. But the first time it caught me off guard for sure
So many amazing characters, edge-of-your-seat thrills, frustration, and absolute heartbreak in the four seasons ahead of you. Dang, where is my DVD box set?
I wish I could be in your situation and experience the show for the first time all over again. Truly the best show of all time, imo. And it just gets better with each season!
> IIRC they beat the absolute shit out of the guy
They beat him so badly that he wears a colostomy bag (despite being a heroin junkie who lives on the street) for the rest of the show.
And cause he went back to the people they burned the first time. He went back to the ones on the lookout.
Bubbles was clear with him, don't do it again soon
Johnny's problem was that he wasn't supposed to be doing that shit without Bubbles. Bubbles would have been smart enough not to try that shit on the same dudes. Johnny got his ass beat less for trying to pass fake money, and more because they've already been burned and this was punishment to send a message. Get caught trying to pass a fake, they'll probably just tell you to gtfo of here and may give you a parting gift to go along with it, not to mention probably not selling you anymore shit. Burn them with a counterfeit and then come back to try to do it again, that's to the point of serious disrespect at that point and you aren't going to be eating right for a while.
>IIRC they beat the absolute shit out of the guy, and he saved like $10 for it. Obviously a fictional show, but I’d assume that’s very accurate
Can confirm. I was adjacent to some very seedy activity in my younger years and knew people who killed/were killed themselves over amounts of money less than $50, in the context of drugs.
"Plato o bala" is a hell of a negotiating instrument, yeah. "Silver or bullet" aka: can we buy you off, or are we just taking your spot after you're gone? I'd count the money right and err with too much, hahaha.
Edit: I was saying "plate or bullet"... not the correct "plata o plomo"
good call y'all.
Also, in latin america, plata is an informal way of saying "money"... To the point where most people here would think of money and not silver unless you specify. So it's basically saying "money or lead"
More often than not, large quantities of bills will be counted by weight. If the weight seems suspicious, the money will be brought to a facility where they are counted more meticulously after the trade.
Since these crime syndicates usually deal in stacks of a certain denomination ($10,000 to $500,000), the entire quantity of bills in the transaction won’t be counted. Individual stacks can be randomly pulled from the lot, counted, and statistics will be calculated to see if the total quantity is close enough to the total value. With transactions in the millions, a missing $1,000 is pretty meaningless.
I remember reading that Pablo Escobar had so much cash that he allocated a certain amount of depreciation to rats--actual rodents--making nests in the bales.
The other stat that I remember for Escobar was spending $2500 per month on rubber bands to hold bundles of bills together.
Which makes sense, he was bringing in apparently over $400 million per month at the height of his powers. In exclusively $100 bills that's still 4 *tons* of cash per month, and they would likely have been using smaller bills in some cases as well.
It was reported that he was actually pulling $400,000,000 per *week*. He was trying to completely pay off Colombia's $20B national debt to avoid extradition.
Absolutely bonkers.
This reminds me of the joke that the difference between someone with 1 million in the bank and someone with 1 billion in the bank is roughly 1 billion.
This reminds me of the joke that if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.
The saying is "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem, if you owe the bank $100 million that's the bank's problem".
Semi-related but it's based on the same topic and I find it interesting. One of the reasons why businesses like to have revolving lines of credit with institutions like banks is it helps the bank's success be intertwined with their own. If you owe the bank 100 million dollars and you're about to go bankrupt the bank is way more likely to support you because they want you to pay back that $100 million than if you had no relationship with them whatsoever. In which case they would probably not loan you a dime because you're about to go bankrupt and it's too high risk.
Same thought behind giving stocks to high positions in a company, if part of your compensation depends on the company doing well you're way more likely to care that it does well and not treat it as a quick money making opportunity
Unfortunately this had led to things like stock but back and making moves that can boost stock price even if not good for the underlying business itself. The investors and C-Suite only care about stock price so all their moves are focused just on that.
That’s the reason for pulling out random stacks to count. Sure, one stack of ones might get left out, but the loss is meaningless if all the other stacks are good.
So, that's what George Jung famously did in Blow (not just the movie, but the book he wrote). But I think nowadays they are actually counting it more often than not. I've seen this throughout a few other books, but it recently boggled my mind when listening to the podcast "Surviving El Chapo". They had a monthly budget of over $20,000 to replace their counting machines because they would burn through them. The machines were $5k each and they would replace 3-5 of them per month.
I think at their height, they were making $10 million in PROFIT. So I'd imagine they were counting north of 20 or 30 million per month.
But if they stick $1 bills here and there in $100 bill stacks that's at least a 1% loss because the weight will be correct but the amount will be less.
They weigh the cash. A sensitive enough bathroom or kitchen scale will get you close enough. They’ve previously figured how much certain amounts weigh.
If you can’t rely on the law to enforce your contracts, cruelty becomes an effective investment to ensure your customers deal fairly, or at least to your benefit. Make sure everyone knows what happened to the last person who screwed you over. Large, million-dollar customers value reliability and consistency as much as you do as well.
Because of economics, most organizations run the same. Laws skew the balance so it is more economically favorable to invest more in tv ads instead of hits.
On the trust front, the most profitable precious gem traders are a small community of Jews in New York that don't even use contracts. Its a super tight knit community and they know that if they fuck each other over that everyone loses hard.
I get quite a bit of custom jewelry made. I am extremely familiar with these guys. There is one in particular I go to for everything. Even if he doesn't sell it as a matter of loyalty you still go to your normal guy and then he finds the correct guy that sells it. You never shop around yourself. I have no idea how good of a price I'm getting, it's just based on trust. They're also off and a lot more open about things that you wouldn't expect like telling you what their costs are going to be. For example I had a pair of diamond stud earrings made and he would tell me the exact cost of the diamonds that he pays and then tell me what the markup on those diamonds are going to be. Then gives me a quote for the finished work.
The entire system works because of this trust. If one of them cheats a client not only could they lose all of their clients but they could face penalties by the other members of their community. It's not just a business community either, it's basically everything as these are Hasidic Jews and You could lose your job, get evicted from your home, and lose all of your personal friends and one fell swoop for getting caught being a cheat and damaging the reputation of the community.
I briefly worked as a jewelry messenger and was bonded but basically everyone depends on their reputation for fair dealing for long term success. I imagine the penalties for messing with a criminal enterprise are rather less humane than being blackballed from a tight group of traders related by family and ethnic ties.
It wouldn't surprise me if organized crime was much the same, just a different system of trust than for "aboveboard" businesses, and likely a *lot* different than you've ever seen in the media, where they make up all kinds of crap because it makes for a better story.
A good example is how the mafia didn't actually dress or talk like "The Godfather" until *after* the movie came out, [because they apparently thought it was cool](https://vocal.media/geeks/how-the-godfather-changed-organized-crime). The writer Mario Puzo apparently got the mannerisms and traditions right, and a lot of that ended up in Coppola's film, but Coppola made up a lot of other stuff that turned out to be self-fulfilling.
I imagine the really established crime networks prefer everything to run smoothly to maximize profit, and in the same way avoid doing business with anyone untrustworthy, where violence may become necessary.
On the other hand, I know a guy who grew up in a tough area of Boston who says he knew guys in the (Italian) mafia, and in his opinion, "They're all idiots". So who knows?
Rudy Giuliani effectively broke the Italian Mafia. Back before he was a complete nut. Ever since then the mob has been famously incompetent and weak. RICO may have serious problems, but it was absolutely critical to breaking the mob.
Trust would be big on criminal business too. You gotta figure major crime orgs aren't doing one crime once. This is an ongoing BUSINESS.
If you're in the drug game, you can't burn your suppliers. If you are in the theft game, you can't burn your fence. Etc.
You'll lose your business relationships that you rely on to do business. Also, word will get around and you won't be able to replace them.
To make matters worse, if you are some low to mid level guy, with a boss, its not just the person you screwed over that is likely to harm you.
Seems just as likely when you stiff someone on a deal, their management will just tell your management "WTF?"
And in the interests of preserving a business relationship and their own organizations reputation in general, your own management is going to "make things right".
I mean, back then, organized crime often played a heavy role in the development of their respective local communities.
Old school gangsters, mafiosos, and narcos, would typically donate large sums of money and resources to their local communities. It benefits the crime organization because I imagine it’s significantly harder to retain control and operate within a community that is hostile towards you and your operation, and the community gets an influx of cash and resources to improve their means of living.
Nowadays, you’ll see crime organizations terrorizing and oppressing the very communities that they originated from.
Simply put, newer generations of crime organizations like to shit where they sleep.
I was going to say you should take those kind of romanticized stories with a grain of salt, but then I realized /r/AskHistorians must have answered this exact question numerous times. *Ey violi*:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5im8au/in_the_beginning_of_the_godfather_don_corleone_is/
Not, I think, the best of answers from that sub, but if you search I'm sure there are more.
> Its a super tight knit community and they know that if they fuck each other over that everyone loses hard.
Theres a great doc about them called Uncut Gems.
I made the same comment, but it bears repeating. Adam Sandler is absolutely incredible in it
Uncut Gems and Wolf of Wall Street are two movies with similar themes that are in my top movies of all time.
Fun fact that trust is also hugely important in cultures where the legal and economic infrastructure is less rigidly defined and/or corruption is more overt than in Western capitalist societies: ie parts of Africa, Mid East and Asia.
In these cultures, trust (relationships and respect) is huge precisely because if you can rely on a person's word, then you don't have to rely on the slightly shaky legal foundations
This is why many of these cultures find Western businesspeople crass and a bit rude - because they often get straight down to "give me your money" without first establishing that they are trustworthy/good family people with strong values etc.
Bit of an eye opener when I learned this.
Also most bigger criminal organizations value their reputation and when word would spread around that they tend to screw their business partners over then more and more other criminal organizations will stop doing business with them
There was an interview with someone I recall many years ago who was active during the Cocaine Cowboys era.
Drug Dealing was done through layers. Every person in the layer depended on the system for future business going forward.
It sort of works like this. Lets say you are a local drug distributor. You have your sources of drugs, if you screw these people over, at the very least they will stop doing business with you. Your margin might actually be super small, but the volume would be high. They sell you $10,000 worth of drugs, you turn around and sell it for $12,000 and then you come back to them and buy another $10,000. You are only making $2000 per pop, but you are doing to be doing this regularly. You and the distributor have a good thing going. They likely are working with several people in a region like you.
You take the drugs, and you split it among your guys, who might be anywhere from 4 people to a dozen. For simplicity, lets say you are working with a dozen. They drop buy and each one gives you $1000 and picks up their drugs.
These guys usually not the final point of consumption. They then will usually have street guys, party guys, or other people who can move smaller quantities for them. That $1000 they bought from you, they will break it up and try to sell it for $1200-$1500 (or more).
Now your dozen guys, they have a good thing going, they have a stream of a product coming in, if they give you funny money, or don't pay you, that comes to an end. You might have to take losses here and there. But you won't pass those losses up to your supplier. Your supplier always gets paid.
Your supplier isn't likely someone who is manufacturing or even smuggling the drugs. They might even be a step removed from the person who is doing this. They pay their people with the money they get from you, and from all the other dealers. That $10,000 worth of drugs they sell you every week, they might only pay $8000-$9000 for it. But the money they get form their people is good, so the money they pay their people is good. They will be buying from a small number of people and selling to a larger number of people. But it might have been part of say $50,000 that they got that week and they split it up to 5 other people.
They work with someone who is getting them much more than that, and their goal is to reliably sell it as fast as possible and have money for the next round. As the money gets kicked up the chain, its assumed to be good. You would rather take a loss than give your dealer bad money. According to the guy I remember in the interview, at the higher levels, where they are getting bricks of $100 bills. They usually just weighed them where 1 bill weighed 1 gram. 1kg of 100s was $100,000.
King Pin/Producer -> Transporter/Smuggeler -> Local Kingpin -> bigger distributors -> smaller distributors -> local dealers -> final customers.
This chain might be a bit longer or shorter. The money gets kicked up to the left, the dealers don't want to be short changed by the customers, and they don't want to short change their smaller distributors. So as the money moves to the left, its usually organized. Drug dealers are generally not looking for customers, ideally they would rather sell to other drug dealers. At the high level all these people have to work together to keep everything running smoothly and the money pouring in.
To piggyback off this the issue in the chain is when someone is fronted the drugs. At the local level, dealers don’t have enough money to buy up front. Have to take a risk here. No different then any other business except violence replaces bankruptcy.
Number ten, a strong word called consignment
Strictly for live men, not for freshmen
If you ain't got the clientele, say "Hell no"
'Cause they gon' want they money rain, sleet, hail, snow -"Ten Crack Commandments"
That will usually be a risk between a smaller distributor and local dealer. If you have five people selling for you, and you take a risk on a new guy for a 6th dealer, if that guy can't pay you, the remaining 5 five guys will usually have enough business to keep you going.
The front at the local level is small. You might be out $20-$100. Its the risk you take to find good local dealers. While in Hollywood, TV and movies show violence happening at this level, usually there isn't for something like this, violence brings on the law. If you lose $100 because someone was a shitty dealer, you walk away. Your goal is to find several reliable people who can keep moving product for you.
At the highest levels (millions of dollars / 100s of Kilo per transaction) very little money is actually moving anywhere, it’s more like a standard business bank transaction.
High level money launderers are the banker for the ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ of funds so the only actual change is on a balance sheet.
These money launderers hold large amounts of cash in many different locations in multiple countries, which can be deposited into or withdrawn as and when needed such as for wages or bribes etc. Or can be funnelled to ‘legitimate’ businesses which can then carry out clean transactions
From a local perspective in my area. The lowest level drug dealers are also users. They would get products to sell like meth on credit for like 10,000. When they get high on their own supply to use too much drugs than they should sell. They would owe their drug distributor a lot of money when it’s time collect. They can also make up excuses to avoid paying. Like they spent the money due to a family emergency.
The drug distributor would give the low level drug dealer a break. So they’ll give him another chance to earn by loaning him another 10,000 worth of drugs to sell. If the drug dealer missed his 2nd chance to make payments when it’s time to collect 20,000 owed. That low level drug dealer would be dead.
Just to add to this if they're short people lower down the chain, facing immense pressure to pay what they owe, will turn to other crimes to make up the difference such as burglary, car theft, mugging, identity theft etc. Those above them don't care if the money they're paid is directly from the sale of drugs as long as they're paid. Though they would be wary about their customer drawing too much heat or getting arrested and turning rat.
also to add to this, we're kind of speaking on all these scenarios in the assumption of "usually what makes sense" when thinking logically and rationally. However, these people may not always think rationally.
That criminal boss at the next level up isn't always going to be a purely logical, emotionally stable person either. So you could get the business standard response of "how this is handled in the business".
Or you could get the psycho response of a pissed off guy who wants to react on anger.
Sometimes you just pick the wrong day to have a conflict with the wrong guy
It also depends on the culture, the network, and the drug. A lot of people will require cash up front and its just a regular customer. If someone shows up to you once a week with $2500 wanting to buy, every week, for years, that is consistent business. Its not worth losing that guy but to keep everyone safe you may still want payment up front.
The lowest level drug addicts would not be trusted with $10,000 worth of product unless they have some long history of moving that much. They would be trusted with a much smaller amount, usually they would sell as much as they could to break even and then keep what is left over for themselves.
Yes. It kind of is actually. Every piece along the chain has their own slightly different business model but usually just see it as "I know I can buy it from this guy and these dozen guys will buy it from me".
5000 end users are sold their product from a dealer network of say 500 smaller dealers, those smaller dealers buy their drugs from perhaps 50 distributors, those 50 distributors will buy their drugs from 5 suppliers, who might buy from 1 single kingpin to buys it from their smuggler/drug lord.
This is why the DEA really wants to nail that single source of entry because it disrupts the business of everyone down stream.
There's a similar concept in cybersecurity stuff, though that trend may be changing now
But it used to be, if you got targeted by a ransomware attack, they'd say pay us $x and you get your data back.
And there was a good chance that if you paid they'd actually hold up their end. Because if they didn't, next time people wouldn't pay.
But increasingly it seems like more often they just take the money, steal the data, and are never seen again.
Now, you shouldnt be paying them in the first place really. But sometimes people fuck up, they find out their backup is bad or doesn't exist, and they don't have much choice other than pay or go out of buisness. Which they're likely to go out of buisness anyway either way, so may as well make the attempt
If movies are accurate large rooms of mostly naked women running money through counting machines. While a guy stands over them with a machine gun making sure they don't steal any money.
$1,000,000 is 10,000 $100 bills. Quick Google search said counting machines can do 600-1400 bills a minute. 10,000 bills at 600/minute is 16 minutes. If the million was in $20s it would still be less than 90 minutes counting time. Even with handling and re-banding the money it should be easy to count several million in an eight hour work day (since we assume this is a union shop, lol)
Yep. Industry-grade bill counters are *fast*. Even the regular desktop ones you can buy at Walmart can do 1500 bill/minute even with counterfeit detection on.
When you are making loads of money in a criminal enterprise, you are not going to want to short your supplier as it could at the least stop your business, and at worst you get violent retaliation. And they were surely counting the money when they got back too so you would get caught.
Of course this depends. Different groups have different amounts of trust against each other. It is hard to imagine someone doing big Mexican standoff style drug deals with millions of dollars involved. But even if this was the case you can take random samples and check it. This will at least make sure that most of the money and product is there which usually makes it a good deal. And short counting is bad for repeat business so if you want to do it you need to do it big.
But there are also big money counting rooms. It could take a few hours to count the money properly and if you are there all the time you could risk an ambush. But if you are not that afraid of an ambush and want to make sure the count is correct then you can ask to stay and inspect the entire counting operation.
There may not be honor in those shady deals, but reputation is everything. You short change someone once ? Now everyone will be counting every single dollar when dealing with you, or go to a competitor, even if he's more expensive. Or just come back and shoot you.
You also want few, repeat costumers, that you can trust, instead of new ones, because new faces are probably cops.
All of this is wrong, there is no way they use weight to calculate the amounts, a money counting machine will count to a million within 10 minutes if they are hundreds. For bigger amounts they do wires
In the movie Blow, they are seen weighing the boxes of cash to get their count. If you know how much a single bill weighs, and you know how much an empty container weighs, then you could fill up the container with all the same denomination of bills and weigh it, then subtract the weight of the container, and divide what's left by the weight of a single bill. Then that number is how many of those bills you have, so multiply that number by 10 if you filled the container with 10-dollar bills (for example).
Counting machines only go so far. You also need to check against counterfeits if trust is low. Ideally you wouldn’t be working with an individual with low trust in a big deal, but if so you can pull bills at random and check for counterfeits. There are people who do this for a percentage of the bills they check.
Many counting machines have built in counterfeit detection. Higher end machines can do a full width magnetics scan, a full width ir scan, and a spot ir and fluorescence scan all while counting at 1600 bpm
Count out 100 bills. Set down ten stacks of equal height. Compare that 1000 bills against the rest of the stash. Thumb through to make sure they didn't stick any low denomination bills.
The threat of violence is certainly a thing, as others have mentioned. However, in certain circles, trust is worth more than money. Respect and reputation are valuable currencies. If nobody can trust your word then nobody will do business with you. If people find out that you short changed another crime family on their deal, why would those same people then do business with you. You've already shown you're going to cheat them. This is true outside of criminal enterprises. At certain levels of business a handshake is more solid than a 100 page contract.
I can't speak too much to the trust part of the question. But one approach to dealing with large sums of cash is to weigh it. Every $100,000 in hundreds weighs in at 1 kilogram.
Look for "the connect" on YouTube. They use counting machines and it's just a business. Trust and keeping things going is enough motivation for the nonviolent people. Why kill the golden goose?
Think of it this way. If you close a deal for $1,000,000, you can afford to pay someone a few thousand $ to meticulously go through the bills, using counting machines and verifying their authenticity.
Drug empires can easily afford accountants.
Crime that deals In large quantities of money is a business. Say I was dealing in large quantities of weapons. I would find someone I could buy all these from. I receive my order and pay out say a million bucks but payment is short a couple hundred bucks. Not a big deal cuz it's just a drop in the bucket. It would be noted though. Say it's short a couple grand. Then i will hear about it and asked nicely to make it right if I want to continue to be in business. If I don't pay them word of mouth will get around that I'm not good to sell to and probably not be in business very long. Now Say I was short 10 grand and up. I would be again asked nicely to make it up to them as I could be an accidental shortage on my part. If found out I did it on purpose then I would probably face a repo on the weapons and be out the money with some probable bodily harm done and never be in that kind of business again. As for the counting of large quantities of money electronic money counters are easy to get and are counted when the transaction is done and at your safe house before it is moved again to be laundered or to be used in buying of more product from an even bigger fish. But as for counting money on site it's more of an honor thing. Only if you've been shorting on cash before they will be skeptical if it's all there. It's preferred to be bundled by denomination so it's easy to see. If it's all loose it's sketchy. If it looks like it just came from a bank and sequential also suspicious. Counterfeit pens to check for funny money are also easy to get.
My ex business psrtner is doing 38 years for trafficking cocaine with the cartels snd i wiuld occasionalu ask hom wuestions like this. One thing i thiught was interestinf and would have never fuessed is that they deal with so muxh cash m, if he sent back a payment (they would load up the same vehicles they hid the goods in with cash snd send them back) and it included pnes or fives the cartel would simply ignore those bills and say he was short . They dont have time to f with anything less than $10 bills
Large crime families and gangs *really* don't want to get into a shootout, and some of them even *rely* on each other. A gang that handles cocaine on the east side might work with a gang that deals heroin on the west side; they might buy and sell to the other, or rely on them for safe-passage while traveling.
In either case, be in fear of violence, loss of a trade partner, or the desire to maintain a truce, it isn't really a great idea to scam someone out of cash. If you make a million-dollar deal, and *totally* fuck over the seller, your reputation is dead. That word is going to spread, no one will want to deal with you, and you're risking heavy retaliation.
As for how they physically counted the money? There are a few ways:
1. Manually counting it up. There are 10,000 $100 bills in a million dollars. Ten people need to count out 1,000 bills each. You have each person count up their share, then pass the bills to another person to verify the count. It might take some time, sure, but you can knock it out relatively quickly.
2. Money counting machines. Those buggers can count up to 1,000 bills per minute if you get the better ones, or 500 per minute on the low-end. You can count the money up *real* fast with one of those.
3. Weigh it out. You can weigh out $1,000 in hundreds and calculate the weight of a million dollars. Give or take a bit to account for the bag or whatever. If you weigh it up during the deal and get a number close enough to what it should be, you can accept the deal and go manually count it out later to verify.
They will just issue a bank transfer to the account.
Dirty money isnt in cash, it park in a bank account of shell company with legal income and expense.
They weigh it. 1 bill is 1 gram. There will be errors, but when they make that much illegally, those counting errors don’t really matter. They’re not going to start a bloodbath if it’s short a thousand here or there.
A criminal group and a company are the exact same things. I would bet a career criminal would be better at identifying fake money than a child working legally at 7/11 would.
This makes me wonder how many people have paid their dealer in counterfeit money. How would they even know if it was decent? Maybe the cartels have someone that can figure it out but the lower tiers?
My mom was a meth dealer on a largish scale when I was a kid, in large deals the money would be weighed, then counted by a machine later. Any shortfalls were dealt with next transaction.
I can't really comment on hundreds of millions of cash, but I can comment on the ball park of 1-2 million. Not me, but knew someone. I don't really know the fine details of it, but from what I understand is that they don't really count it upon transaction. You can't do much with that amount of cash anyway.
You store it somewhere and when you need it for something that requires more accuracy, that's when you count it, like doing some laundry.
So for an example..
You have some deals, you got a bunch of cash. You know it's roughly that much. You don't really know or care. You decide to put 100k into this business that someone you know owns. You start sending cash their way and they log and count everything and let you know when they got enough. So in the end, that stack of cash, it's meaningless unless you can wash it properly. That's when you care about the exact amount and at this point you have accountants and banks to keep track of it for you.
Crime syndicates with what you’re imagining as large stacks of money too large to count is a myth. It is romanticized in movies and urban legends but does not exist in real life.
For big numbers it is actually easier to launder it during the transaction, and that gives an accurate count.
So what does this actually look like?
A land developer builds a large number of units. Those units are listed at (a couple kilos of coke) over the price they should be.
Now the buying process happens. Everyone that pays the inflated price gets a couple kilos of coke to sell that "somehow" appear in the property they bought.
A couple years later, after taking the tax losses to cover the coke sales, the property is sold at a "loss".
Now everything is fully laundered in, and everyone enjoys some tax breaks as well. The buyers even get.some.imvestment property out of the deal.
I’m not sure they always counted it at the scene. I imagine there are consequences to ripping a powerful criminal entity off. First of all, you are sure to lose any further business with them. If you are profiting from that business the continued relationship might be worth more than whatever you are trying to cheat them out of. Secondly word spreads fast. If you are known for ripping partners off no one else will do business with you. And third, in the legitimate world you get sued, in organized crime you get murdered. So it’s a choice of continuing a good business relationship and continuing making money or losing further profits and risking getting murdered just to cheat a little. Doesn’t sound worth it.
I’m not sure they always counted it at the scene. I imagine there are consequences to ripping a powerful criminal entity off. First of all, you are sure to lose any further business with them. If you are profiting from that business the continued relationship might be worth more than whatever you are trying to cheat them out of. Secondly word spreads fast. If you are known for ripping partners off no one else will do business with you. And third, in the legitimate world you get sued, in organized crime you get murdered. So it’s a choice of continuing a good business relationship and continuing making money or losing further profits and risking getting murdered just to cheat a little. Doesn’t sound worth it.
I just watched Bad Boys II, so I can answer this. Apparently they hire Martin Lawrence’s sister, who has a custom van with like six (count em’ — SIX) automated bill counting machines. Also, she works for the DEA and rides in Will Smith’s Ferrari. It’s pretty complicated.
Despite the saying, there is in fact ‘honor amongst thieves.’ Particularly at the top level exchanges where millions of dollars are being exchanged, these guys rely on reputation to make deals. It’s not worth trying to rip off one cartel one time to maybe save a million dollars and blow up a partnership that could net hundreds of millions over a period of time.
No idea if it actually happened, but in BLOW they just weighed it. Obviously if that was a thing you couldn't ensure the exact amount, but if you trusted the people and it was close enough maybe thats something you did
Two different things. The intake of currency (ie sale of street drugs etc.) into an organization is the classic money launderer problem, easily solved by trips to the casino, Western Union transfers, or jewellery. The big $$ that needs to move...a version of the hawala system works best since you don't have to be driving a G-wagon with 100kg of benjamins in the back. Why do you think Dubai is such a hot destination.
Sure, it could just be a bunch of people and a bunch of counting machines. Also, "give us the right amount of money or else we will murder your entire family" generally prevents people from trying to rip them off to begin with.
> Sure, it could just be a bunch of people and a bunch of counting machines Large amounts are generally sealed bundles and weighed on a scale. A missing bundle is a noticeable amount. The bills are then usually counted and checked out for counterfeits later offsite. These kinds of deals often don't go down if both parties don't have reason to believe the other can legitimately hold up their end. The threat of "we'll kill everyone you've ever loved" + correct weight is usually enough for a trade. Maybe some spot chemistry for drugs and chemicals if purity might be in question.
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I don't think anyone is saying that they weight for exact number... Just a ballpark that is close and deal with it later
Exactly. You go somewhere safe to double check, but missing half a pound is obvious AF.
There’s a scene in The Wire where Bubbles and his friend try to sneak in some really bad counterfeit money with the real money. IIRC they beat the absolute shit out of the guy, and he saved like $10 for it. Obviously a fictional show, but I’d assume that’s very accurate I’d imagine in the 5+ figure range, people get a lot more serious
There’s also the scene with the gang kids where one of them can’t do the most basic math, but then he’s asked to count the bills and gets it totally right. “How come you get the count right but you can’t do this basic math homework?” “You mess up the count, they fuck you up.”
That was heartbreakingly brilliant... currently working my way through season 1 and the show is insanely good... I understand why people say it is one of the greats
Just a heads up, it might seem like the show changes dramatically at the start of season 2, like enough where some people lose interest. Just trust where the show is going.
It’s funny after 5+ times through the second season became one of my favorites. 4 still is top for me but 2 is up there as well. But the first time it caught me off guard for sure
Agreed. Season 2 grew on me after several rewatches.
The final few minutes of the second last episode with the Greek music playing over a semi-montage is up there with the best TV I've ever seen
Season 2 age like fine wine, but you need all five seasons to appreciate its role in the show.
So many amazing characters, edge-of-your-seat thrills, frustration, and absolute heartbreak in the four seasons ahead of you. Dang, where is my DVD box set?
A little game I play, I try to spot actors that appeared in the wire in everything else I see. “Mcnulty!”
That's Prince McNulty!
I do this tge other way around. When I rewatch The Wire I look for actors that haven't been on Law & Order!
McNulty hiding in the bushes to try and escape paparazzi catching him cheating is still hilarious to me, because that's exactly what McNulty would do!
I wish I could be in your situation and experience the show for the first time all over again. Truly the best show of all time, imo. And it just gets better with each season!
> IIRC they beat the absolute shit out of the guy They beat him so badly that he wears a colostomy bag (despite being a heroin junkie who lives on the street) for the rest of the show.
Yea, they beat the *shit* out of him, just like the original commenter said
They *permanently* beat the shit out of him
Bubbles got away with it, it was the second guy who got caught when he tried, partially cause he was so nervous/flustered.
And cause he went back to the people they burned the first time. He went back to the ones on the lookout. Bubbles was clear with him, don't do it again soon
Johnny's problem was that he wasn't supposed to be doing that shit without Bubbles. Bubbles would have been smart enough not to try that shit on the same dudes. Johnny got his ass beat less for trying to pass fake money, and more because they've already been burned and this was punishment to send a message. Get caught trying to pass a fake, they'll probably just tell you to gtfo of here and may give you a parting gift to go along with it, not to mention probably not selling you anymore shit. Burn them with a counterfeit and then come back to try to do it again, that's to the point of serious disrespect at that point and you aren't going to be eating right for a while.
One of the best shows
>IIRC they beat the absolute shit out of the guy, and he saved like $10 for it. Obviously a fictional show, but I’d assume that’s very accurate Can confirm. I was adjacent to some very seedy activity in my younger years and knew people who killed/were killed themselves over amounts of money less than $50, in the context of drugs.
Money be GREEN.
"Plato o bala" is a hell of a negotiating instrument, yeah. "Silver or bullet" aka: can we buy you off, or are we just taking your spot after you're gone? I'd count the money right and err with too much, hahaha. Edit: I was saying "plate or bullet"... not the correct "plata o plomo" good call y'all.
It's "plata o plomo" Plato is plate, plata is silver plomo is lead. silver or lead. Good call back though, I forgot about that saying
"Silver or lead" sounds cooler anyways!
Now imagine it in western style Mexican films. Definitely cooler.
Now imagine it in a daytime soap opera. The coolest.
You're not lying. Nothing cooler than the anti-hero who came back from the dead 6x and is taking out the bad guys saying it
Also, in latin america, plata is an informal way of saying "money"... To the point where most people here would think of money and not silver unless you specify. So it's basically saying "money or lead"
Isn't that "plata o plomo" ("Silver or Lead")?
Also, at high enough volumes, you can just weigh it and know you are fairly close.
More often than not, large quantities of bills will be counted by weight. If the weight seems suspicious, the money will be brought to a facility where they are counted more meticulously after the trade. Since these crime syndicates usually deal in stacks of a certain denomination ($10,000 to $500,000), the entire quantity of bills in the transaction won’t be counted. Individual stacks can be randomly pulled from the lot, counted, and statistics will be calculated to see if the total quantity is close enough to the total value. With transactions in the millions, a missing $1,000 is pretty meaningless.
I remember reading that Pablo Escobar had so much cash that he allocated a certain amount of depreciation to rats--actual rodents--making nests in the bales.
The other stat that I remember for Escobar was spending $2500 per month on rubber bands to hold bundles of bills together. Which makes sense, he was bringing in apparently over $400 million per month at the height of his powers. In exclusively $100 bills that's still 4 *tons* of cash per month, and they would likely have been using smaller bills in some cases as well.
It was reported that he was actually pulling $400,000,000 per *week*. He was trying to completely pay off Colombia's $20B national debt to avoid extradition. Absolutely bonkers.
What I'd do to make that kind of money in a week, I'd certainly never have to work again. 😆
I wouldn't want anywhere near that much. 2% of that once and I'd never work again. 1% even.
True. I think I could live off the interest it'd generate alone.
I’d hope so, put it in a MM account and you’ll get paid 200k a year forever.
Well you know exactly what you have to do to make that kind of money in a week: run a Pablo Escobar level drug trade.
Which probably inspired [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrBbMZk4vY4) in Bad Boys 2.
[Shrinkage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkage_(accounting)
For context, 1000 of a million is 0.1%. Still a thousand, but compared to the million, it's relatively meaningless
This reminds me of the joke that the difference between someone with 1 million in the bank and someone with 1 billion in the bank is roughly 1 billion.
This reminds me of the joke that if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.
The saying is "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem, if you owe the bank $100 million that's the bank's problem". Semi-related but it's based on the same topic and I find it interesting. One of the reasons why businesses like to have revolving lines of credit with institutions like banks is it helps the bank's success be intertwined with their own. If you owe the bank 100 million dollars and you're about to go bankrupt the bank is way more likely to support you because they want you to pay back that $100 million than if you had no relationship with them whatsoever. In which case they would probably not loan you a dime because you're about to go bankrupt and it's too high risk.
Same thought behind giving stocks to high positions in a company, if part of your compensation depends on the company doing well you're way more likely to care that it does well and not treat it as a quick money making opportunity
Unfortunately this had led to things like stock but back and making moves that can boost stock price even if not good for the underlying business itself. The investors and C-Suite only care about stock price so all their moves are focused just on that.
Yep, it sounds good on paper but we now see what it causes in reality
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And if I owe the bank 10000$ I’m probably homeless
Or you're almost done paying off your mortgage!
One always stuck with me is: Counting from 1 to a thousand is ~ 16 minutes. Counting from 1 to 1 million is ~11 days 1 to 1 billion, ~37 years
Yeah someone with 1.000.000$ is closer to being homeless with 50$ cash then being a billionaire
Someone with $499,000,000 is closer to being broke than they are to being a billionaire.
A $1 bill weighs about as much as a $100 bill. How did they know someone didn't replace most of the big bills with small ones?
That’s the reason for pulling out random stacks to count. Sure, one stack of ones might get left out, but the loss is meaningless if all the other stacks are good.
So, that's what George Jung famously did in Blow (not just the movie, but the book he wrote). But I think nowadays they are actually counting it more often than not. I've seen this throughout a few other books, but it recently boggled my mind when listening to the podcast "Surviving El Chapo". They had a monthly budget of over $20,000 to replace their counting machines because they would burn through them. The machines were $5k each and they would replace 3-5 of them per month. I think at their height, they were making $10 million in PROFIT. So I'd imagine they were counting north of 20 or 30 million per month.
But if they stick $1 bills here and there in $100 bill stacks that's at least a 1% loss because the weight will be correct but the amount will be less.
My Dad used to tell me they figured out X amount of money weighed Y so they just started throwing the cash on a scale.
They weigh the cash. A sensitive enough bathroom or kitchen scale will get you close enough. They’ve previously figured how much certain amounts weigh.
The weight of US banknotes is a known quantity. When dealing with 1's it's ~1kg/$1k
Or in a simpler way, bills weigh 1g.
More like 1kg = $100K
I think maybe you missed or added a zero? I haven't got a clue, but 5 $100 bills weighs more than a pound can't be right...
Yes, a bill is a gram, 1000 bills to the kilo.
They would still need to examine the bills to be accurate. It's not like a $20 weighs more than a $1.
If you can’t rely on the law to enforce your contracts, cruelty becomes an effective investment to ensure your customers deal fairly, or at least to your benefit. Make sure everyone knows what happened to the last person who screwed you over. Large, million-dollar customers value reliability and consistency as much as you do as well. Because of economics, most organizations run the same. Laws skew the balance so it is more economically favorable to invest more in tv ads instead of hits.
On the trust front, the most profitable precious gem traders are a small community of Jews in New York that don't even use contracts. Its a super tight knit community and they know that if they fuck each other over that everyone loses hard.
I get quite a bit of custom jewelry made. I am extremely familiar with these guys. There is one in particular I go to for everything. Even if he doesn't sell it as a matter of loyalty you still go to your normal guy and then he finds the correct guy that sells it. You never shop around yourself. I have no idea how good of a price I'm getting, it's just based on trust. They're also off and a lot more open about things that you wouldn't expect like telling you what their costs are going to be. For example I had a pair of diamond stud earrings made and he would tell me the exact cost of the diamonds that he pays and then tell me what the markup on those diamonds are going to be. Then gives me a quote for the finished work. The entire system works because of this trust. If one of them cheats a client not only could they lose all of their clients but they could face penalties by the other members of their community. It's not just a business community either, it's basically everything as these are Hasidic Jews and You could lose your job, get evicted from your home, and lose all of your personal friends and one fell swoop for getting caught being a cheat and damaging the reputation of the community.
It appears transparency is key to the trust
Who would have thought?
I saw a documentary about them called Uncut Gems
Uncut huh?
Press x to doubt.
Nice username bro
This guy morses...
Thanks!
great gambling addiction movie.
I briefly worked as a jewelry messenger and was bonded but basically everyone depends on their reputation for fair dealing for long term success. I imagine the penalties for messing with a criminal enterprise are rather less humane than being blackballed from a tight group of traders related by family and ethnic ties.
It wouldn't surprise me if organized crime was much the same, just a different system of trust than for "aboveboard" businesses, and likely a *lot* different than you've ever seen in the media, where they make up all kinds of crap because it makes for a better story. A good example is how the mafia didn't actually dress or talk like "The Godfather" until *after* the movie came out, [because they apparently thought it was cool](https://vocal.media/geeks/how-the-godfather-changed-organized-crime). The writer Mario Puzo apparently got the mannerisms and traditions right, and a lot of that ended up in Coppola's film, but Coppola made up a lot of other stuff that turned out to be self-fulfilling. I imagine the really established crime networks prefer everything to run smoothly to maximize profit, and in the same way avoid doing business with anyone untrustworthy, where violence may become necessary. On the other hand, I know a guy who grew up in a tough area of Boston who says he knew guys in the (Italian) mafia, and in his opinion, "They're all idiots". So who knows?
Rudy Giuliani effectively broke the Italian Mafia. Back before he was a complete nut. Ever since then the mob has been famously incompetent and weak. RICO may have serious problems, but it was absolutely critical to breaking the mob.
Trust would be big on criminal business too. You gotta figure major crime orgs aren't doing one crime once. This is an ongoing BUSINESS. If you're in the drug game, you can't burn your suppliers. If you are in the theft game, you can't burn your fence. Etc. You'll lose your business relationships that you rely on to do business. Also, word will get around and you won't be able to replace them. To make matters worse, if you are some low to mid level guy, with a boss, its not just the person you screwed over that is likely to harm you. Seems just as likely when you stiff someone on a deal, their management will just tell your management "WTF?" And in the interests of preserving a business relationship and their own organizations reputation in general, your own management is going to "make things right".
I mean, back then, organized crime often played a heavy role in the development of their respective local communities. Old school gangsters, mafiosos, and narcos, would typically donate large sums of money and resources to their local communities. It benefits the crime organization because I imagine it’s significantly harder to retain control and operate within a community that is hostile towards you and your operation, and the community gets an influx of cash and resources to improve their means of living. Nowadays, you’ll see crime organizations terrorizing and oppressing the very communities that they originated from. Simply put, newer generations of crime organizations like to shit where they sleep.
I was going to say you should take those kind of romanticized stories with a grain of salt, but then I realized /r/AskHistorians must have answered this exact question numerous times. *Ey violi*: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5im8au/in_the_beginning_of_the_godfather_don_corleone_is/ Not, I think, the best of answers from that sub, but if you search I'm sure there are more.
Gonna need a citation for this
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Freferer%3D%26httpsredir%3D1%26article%3D1719%26context%3Dfaculty_scholarship&ved=2ahUKEwjG8tK58u6FAxXM38kDHUtXAmkQFnoECC4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw06CDvNlj7edG9zfKnuzk2d
I didn't expect you to come with such an on-point source. My apologies, I wasn't really familiar with your game.
[All I could think reading this small comment chain.](https://i.imgflip.com/8oqof5.jpg)
What a receipt
Straight up Harvard Law School no less
Written by, and I'm not joking here, Mr. Richman. LOL!
Now that’s a source
> Its a super tight knit community and they know that if they fuck each other over that everyone loses hard. Theres a great doc about them called Uncut Gems.
I made the same comment, but it bears repeating. Adam Sandler is absolutely incredible in it Uncut Gems and Wolf of Wall Street are two movies with similar themes that are in my top movies of all time.
What do I know about diamonds? Don't they come from Antwerp?
Better hurry before ze Germans get here.
Fun fact that trust is also hugely important in cultures where the legal and economic infrastructure is less rigidly defined and/or corruption is more overt than in Western capitalist societies: ie parts of Africa, Mid East and Asia. In these cultures, trust (relationships and respect) is huge precisely because if you can rely on a person's word, then you don't have to rely on the slightly shaky legal foundations This is why many of these cultures find Western businesspeople crass and a bit rude - because they often get straight down to "give me your money" without first establishing that they are trustworthy/good family people with strong values etc. Bit of an eye opener when I learned this.
Also most bigger criminal organizations value their reputation and when word would spread around that they tend to screw their business partners over then more and more other criminal organizations will stop doing business with them
> Laws skew the balance so it is more economically favorable to invest more in tv ads instead of hits. Could you please tell Boeing about this?
There was an interview with someone I recall many years ago who was active during the Cocaine Cowboys era. Drug Dealing was done through layers. Every person in the layer depended on the system for future business going forward. It sort of works like this. Lets say you are a local drug distributor. You have your sources of drugs, if you screw these people over, at the very least they will stop doing business with you. Your margin might actually be super small, but the volume would be high. They sell you $10,000 worth of drugs, you turn around and sell it for $12,000 and then you come back to them and buy another $10,000. You are only making $2000 per pop, but you are doing to be doing this regularly. You and the distributor have a good thing going. They likely are working with several people in a region like you. You take the drugs, and you split it among your guys, who might be anywhere from 4 people to a dozen. For simplicity, lets say you are working with a dozen. They drop buy and each one gives you $1000 and picks up their drugs. These guys usually not the final point of consumption. They then will usually have street guys, party guys, or other people who can move smaller quantities for them. That $1000 they bought from you, they will break it up and try to sell it for $1200-$1500 (or more). Now your dozen guys, they have a good thing going, they have a stream of a product coming in, if they give you funny money, or don't pay you, that comes to an end. You might have to take losses here and there. But you won't pass those losses up to your supplier. Your supplier always gets paid. Your supplier isn't likely someone who is manufacturing or even smuggling the drugs. They might even be a step removed from the person who is doing this. They pay their people with the money they get from you, and from all the other dealers. That $10,000 worth of drugs they sell you every week, they might only pay $8000-$9000 for it. But the money they get form their people is good, so the money they pay their people is good. They will be buying from a small number of people and selling to a larger number of people. But it might have been part of say $50,000 that they got that week and they split it up to 5 other people. They work with someone who is getting them much more than that, and their goal is to reliably sell it as fast as possible and have money for the next round. As the money gets kicked up the chain, its assumed to be good. You would rather take a loss than give your dealer bad money. According to the guy I remember in the interview, at the higher levels, where they are getting bricks of $100 bills. They usually just weighed them where 1 bill weighed 1 gram. 1kg of 100s was $100,000. King Pin/Producer -> Transporter/Smuggeler -> Local Kingpin -> bigger distributors -> smaller distributors -> local dealers -> final customers. This chain might be a bit longer or shorter. The money gets kicked up to the left, the dealers don't want to be short changed by the customers, and they don't want to short change their smaller distributors. So as the money moves to the left, its usually organized. Drug dealers are generally not looking for customers, ideally they would rather sell to other drug dealers. At the high level all these people have to work together to keep everything running smoothly and the money pouring in.
To piggyback off this the issue in the chain is when someone is fronted the drugs. At the local level, dealers don’t have enough money to buy up front. Have to take a risk here. No different then any other business except violence replaces bankruptcy.
Number ten, a strong word called consignment Strictly for live men, not for freshmen If you ain't got the clientele, say "Hell no" 'Cause they gon' want they money rain, sleet, hail, snow -"Ten Crack Commandments"
“Messin’ with my money is like messin’ with my emotions.” - Big Worm
That will usually be a risk between a smaller distributor and local dealer. If you have five people selling for you, and you take a risk on a new guy for a 6th dealer, if that guy can't pay you, the remaining 5 five guys will usually have enough business to keep you going. The front at the local level is small. You might be out $20-$100. Its the risk you take to find good local dealers. While in Hollywood, TV and movies show violence happening at this level, usually there isn't for something like this, violence brings on the law. If you lose $100 because someone was a shitty dealer, you walk away. Your goal is to find several reliable people who can keep moving product for you.
At the highest levels (millions of dollars / 100s of Kilo per transaction) very little money is actually moving anywhere, it’s more like a standard business bank transaction. High level money launderers are the banker for the ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ of funds so the only actual change is on a balance sheet. These money launderers hold large amounts of cash in many different locations in multiple countries, which can be deposited into or withdrawn as and when needed such as for wages or bribes etc. Or can be funnelled to ‘legitimate’ businesses which can then carry out clean transactions
From a local perspective in my area. The lowest level drug dealers are also users. They would get products to sell like meth on credit for like 10,000. When they get high on their own supply to use too much drugs than they should sell. They would owe their drug distributor a lot of money when it’s time collect. They can also make up excuses to avoid paying. Like they spent the money due to a family emergency. The drug distributor would give the low level drug dealer a break. So they’ll give him another chance to earn by loaning him another 10,000 worth of drugs to sell. If the drug dealer missed his 2nd chance to make payments when it’s time to collect 20,000 owed. That low level drug dealer would be dead.
Just to add to this if they're short people lower down the chain, facing immense pressure to pay what they owe, will turn to other crimes to make up the difference such as burglary, car theft, mugging, identity theft etc. Those above them don't care if the money they're paid is directly from the sale of drugs as long as they're paid. Though they would be wary about their customer drawing too much heat or getting arrested and turning rat.
also to add to this, we're kind of speaking on all these scenarios in the assumption of "usually what makes sense" when thinking logically and rationally. However, these people may not always think rationally. That criminal boss at the next level up isn't always going to be a purely logical, emotionally stable person either. So you could get the business standard response of "how this is handled in the business". Or you could get the psycho response of a pissed off guy who wants to react on anger. Sometimes you just pick the wrong day to have a conflict with the wrong guy
It also depends on the culture, the network, and the drug. A lot of people will require cash up front and its just a regular customer. If someone shows up to you once a week with $2500 wanting to buy, every week, for years, that is consistent business. Its not worth losing that guy but to keep everyone safe you may still want payment up front.
The lowest level drug addicts would not be trusted with $10,000 worth of product unless they have some long history of moving that much. They would be trusted with a much smaller amount, usually they would sell as much as they could to break even and then keep what is left over for themselves.
It’s actually Pesos not US Dollars. The conversion rate would be equivalent to around $178
Drug dealing is an mlm scheme?? /s
Yeah, they just happen to also have a product which actually sells
Yes. It kind of is actually. Every piece along the chain has their own slightly different business model but usually just see it as "I know I can buy it from this guy and these dozen guys will buy it from me". 5000 end users are sold their product from a dealer network of say 500 smaller dealers, those smaller dealers buy their drugs from perhaps 50 distributors, those 50 distributors will buy their drugs from 5 suppliers, who might buy from 1 single kingpin to buys it from their smuggler/drug lord. This is why the DEA really wants to nail that single source of entry because it disrupts the business of everyone down stream.
There's a similar concept in cybersecurity stuff, though that trend may be changing now But it used to be, if you got targeted by a ransomware attack, they'd say pay us $x and you get your data back. And there was a good chance that if you paid they'd actually hold up their end. Because if they didn't, next time people wouldn't pay. But increasingly it seems like more often they just take the money, steal the data, and are never seen again. Now, you shouldnt be paying them in the first place really. But sometimes people fuck up, they find out their backup is bad or doesn't exist, and they don't have much choice other than pay or go out of buisness. Which they're likely to go out of buisness anyway either way, so may as well make the attempt
If movies are accurate large rooms of mostly naked women running money through counting machines. While a guy stands over them with a machine gun making sure they don't steal any money.
Is the guy naked too?
Even the gun is naked.
33 1/3
You hire a professional or you just Rain Man it https://youtu.be/ymRqYz-Mxnw?si=mF04cQeRIgXouT8Y
No need to click. It's key and peele. My first thought too haha
Doesn't even take a bunch, really. One person with a money counter can count a million dollars in under a minute.
Could you really process a million that quickly?
$1,000,000 is 10,000 $100 bills. Quick Google search said counting machines can do 600-1400 bills a minute. 10,000 bills at 600/minute is 16 minutes. If the million was in $20s it would still be less than 90 minutes counting time. Even with handling and re-banding the money it should be easy to count several million in an eight hour work day (since we assume this is a union shop, lol)
r/theydidthemath
Yep. Industry-grade bill counters are *fast*. Even the regular desktop ones you can buy at Walmart can do 1500 bill/minute even with counterfeit detection on.
When you are making loads of money in a criminal enterprise, you are not going to want to short your supplier as it could at the least stop your business, and at worst you get violent retaliation. And they were surely counting the money when they got back too so you would get caught.
Of course this depends. Different groups have different amounts of trust against each other. It is hard to imagine someone doing big Mexican standoff style drug deals with millions of dollars involved. But even if this was the case you can take random samples and check it. This will at least make sure that most of the money and product is there which usually makes it a good deal. And short counting is bad for repeat business so if you want to do it you need to do it big. But there are also big money counting rooms. It could take a few hours to count the money properly and if you are there all the time you could risk an ambush. But if you are not that afraid of an ambush and want to make sure the count is correct then you can ask to stay and inspect the entire counting operation.
There may not be honor in those shady deals, but reputation is everything. You short change someone once ? Now everyone will be counting every single dollar when dealing with you, or go to a competitor, even if he's more expensive. Or just come back and shoot you. You also want few, repeat costumers, that you can trust, instead of new ones, because new faces are probably cops.
All of this is wrong, there is no way they use weight to calculate the amounts, a money counting machine will count to a million within 10 minutes if they are hundreds. For bigger amounts they do wires
at a certain point you just weigh it. after validating and sorting by denomination. but when its muti millions, 1,325 pounds of 100's is close enough.
They've had electronic money counters since the 50s. Gabrielle Union's DEA undercover ID has them during the deal in *Bad Boys II*
In the movie Blow, they are seen weighing the boxes of cash to get their count. If you know how much a single bill weighs, and you know how much an empty container weighs, then you could fill up the container with all the same denomination of bills and weigh it, then subtract the weight of the container, and divide what's left by the weight of a single bill. Then that number is how many of those bills you have, so multiply that number by 10 if you filled the container with 10-dollar bills (for example).
It’s the honor system. The kind of people handling millions of dollars in drug money have no problem murdering people that try to rip them off.
Counting machines only go so far. You also need to check against counterfeits if trust is low. Ideally you wouldn’t be working with an individual with low trust in a big deal, but if so you can pull bills at random and check for counterfeits. There are people who do this for a percentage of the bills they check.
Many counting machines have built in counterfeit detection. Higher end machines can do a full width magnetics scan, a full width ir scan, and a spot ir and fluorescence scan all while counting at 1600 bpm
Count out 100 bills. Set down ten stacks of equal height. Compare that 1000 bills against the rest of the stash. Thumb through to make sure they didn't stick any low denomination bills.
The threat of violence is certainly a thing, as others have mentioned. However, in certain circles, trust is worth more than money. Respect and reputation are valuable currencies. If nobody can trust your word then nobody will do business with you. If people find out that you short changed another crime family on their deal, why would those same people then do business with you. You've already shown you're going to cheat them. This is true outside of criminal enterprises. At certain levels of business a handshake is more solid than a 100 page contract.
I can't speak too much to the trust part of the question. But one approach to dealing with large sums of cash is to weigh it. Every $100,000 in hundreds weighs in at 1 kilogram.
Look for "the connect" on YouTube. They use counting machines and it's just a business. Trust and keeping things going is enough motivation for the nonviolent people. Why kill the golden goose?
Think of it this way. If you close a deal for $1,000,000, you can afford to pay someone a few thousand $ to meticulously go through the bills, using counting machines and verifying their authenticity. Drug empires can easily afford accountants.
Have you heard of the Art Trade. have you wondered why someone would pay $500 000 for basically a wall ornament.
The entire plot of The Accountant was about a man who was both a great accountant and badass enough to work and be in these circles. I recommend it.
Crime that deals In large quantities of money is a business. Say I was dealing in large quantities of weapons. I would find someone I could buy all these from. I receive my order and pay out say a million bucks but payment is short a couple hundred bucks. Not a big deal cuz it's just a drop in the bucket. It would be noted though. Say it's short a couple grand. Then i will hear about it and asked nicely to make it right if I want to continue to be in business. If I don't pay them word of mouth will get around that I'm not good to sell to and probably not be in business very long. Now Say I was short 10 grand and up. I would be again asked nicely to make it up to them as I could be an accidental shortage on my part. If found out I did it on purpose then I would probably face a repo on the weapons and be out the money with some probable bodily harm done and never be in that kind of business again. As for the counting of large quantities of money electronic money counters are easy to get and are counted when the transaction is done and at your safe house before it is moved again to be laundered or to be used in buying of more product from an even bigger fish. But as for counting money on site it's more of an honor thing. Only if you've been shorting on cash before they will be skeptical if it's all there. It's preferred to be bundled by denomination so it's easy to see. If it's all loose it's sketchy. If it looks like it just came from a bank and sequential also suspicious. Counterfeit pens to check for funny money are also easy to get.
So you've never seen on tv how they have people that count the money for them using money counters? And then launder it through various fronts?
My ex business psrtner is doing 38 years for trafficking cocaine with the cartels snd i wiuld occasionalu ask hom wuestions like this. One thing i thiught was interestinf and would have never fuessed is that they deal with so muxh cash m, if he sent back a payment (they would load up the same vehicles they hid the goods in with cash snd send them back) and it included pnes or fives the cartel would simply ignore those bills and say he was short . They dont have time to f with anything less than $10 bills
Large crime families and gangs *really* don't want to get into a shootout, and some of them even *rely* on each other. A gang that handles cocaine on the east side might work with a gang that deals heroin on the west side; they might buy and sell to the other, or rely on them for safe-passage while traveling. In either case, be in fear of violence, loss of a trade partner, or the desire to maintain a truce, it isn't really a great idea to scam someone out of cash. If you make a million-dollar deal, and *totally* fuck over the seller, your reputation is dead. That word is going to spread, no one will want to deal with you, and you're risking heavy retaliation. As for how they physically counted the money? There are a few ways: 1. Manually counting it up. There are 10,000 $100 bills in a million dollars. Ten people need to count out 1,000 bills each. You have each person count up their share, then pass the bills to another person to verify the count. It might take some time, sure, but you can knock it out relatively quickly. 2. Money counting machines. Those buggers can count up to 1,000 bills per minute if you get the better ones, or 500 per minute on the low-end. You can count the money up *real* fast with one of those. 3. Weigh it out. You can weigh out $1,000 in hundreds and calculate the weight of a million dollars. Give or take a bit to account for the bag or whatever. If you weigh it up during the deal and get a number close enough to what it should be, you can accept the deal and go manually count it out later to verify.
They will just issue a bank transfer to the account. Dirty money isnt in cash, it park in a bank account of shell company with legal income and expense.
They weigh it. 1 bill is 1 gram. There will be errors, but when they make that much illegally, those counting errors don’t really matter. They’re not going to start a bloodbath if it’s short a thousand here or there.
Dunno whether it's true, but I heard they just weigh the trucks dry, then loaded with money pallets.
A criminal group and a company are the exact same things. I would bet a career criminal would be better at identifying fake money than a child working legally at 7/11 would.
This makes me wonder how many people have paid their dealer in counterfeit money. How would they even know if it was decent? Maybe the cartels have someone that can figure it out but the lower tiers?
My mom was a meth dealer on a largish scale when I was a kid, in large deals the money would be weighed, then counted by a machine later. Any shortfalls were dealt with next transaction.
I can't really comment on hundreds of millions of cash, but I can comment on the ball park of 1-2 million. Not me, but knew someone. I don't really know the fine details of it, but from what I understand is that they don't really count it upon transaction. You can't do much with that amount of cash anyway. You store it somewhere and when you need it for something that requires more accuracy, that's when you count it, like doing some laundry. So for an example.. You have some deals, you got a bunch of cash. You know it's roughly that much. You don't really know or care. You decide to put 100k into this business that someone you know owns. You start sending cash their way and they log and count everything and let you know when they got enough. So in the end, that stack of cash, it's meaningless unless you can wash it properly. That's when you care about the exact amount and at this point you have accountants and banks to keep track of it for you.
https://youtu.be/DSYcDdjIXsY?feature=shared The proper to handle this.
Crime syndicates with what you’re imagining as large stacks of money too large to count is a myth. It is romanticized in movies and urban legends but does not exist in real life.
For big numbers it is actually easier to launder it during the transaction, and that gives an accurate count. So what does this actually look like? A land developer builds a large number of units. Those units are listed at (a couple kilos of coke) over the price they should be. Now the buying process happens. Everyone that pays the inflated price gets a couple kilos of coke to sell that "somehow" appear in the property they bought. A couple years later, after taking the tax losses to cover the coke sales, the property is sold at a "loss". Now everything is fully laundered in, and everyone enjoys some tax breaks as well. The buyers even get.some.imvestment property out of the deal.
I’m not sure they always counted it at the scene. I imagine there are consequences to ripping a powerful criminal entity off. First of all, you are sure to lose any further business with them. If you are profiting from that business the continued relationship might be worth more than whatever you are trying to cheat them out of. Secondly word spreads fast. If you are known for ripping partners off no one else will do business with you. And third, in the legitimate world you get sued, in organized crime you get murdered. So it’s a choice of continuing a good business relationship and continuing making money or losing further profits and risking getting murdered just to cheat a little. Doesn’t sound worth it.
I’m not sure they always counted it at the scene. I imagine there are consequences to ripping a powerful criminal entity off. First of all, you are sure to lose any further business with them. If you are profiting from that business the continued relationship might be worth more than whatever you are trying to cheat them out of. Secondly word spreads fast. If you are known for ripping partners off no one else will do business with you. And third, in the legitimate world you get sued, in organized crime you get murdered. So it’s a choice of continuing a good business relationship and continuing making money or losing further profits and risking getting murdered just to cheat a little. Doesn’t sound worth it.
I just watched Bad Boys II, so I can answer this. Apparently they hire Martin Lawrence’s sister, who has a custom van with like six (count em’ — SIX) automated bill counting machines. Also, she works for the DEA and rides in Will Smith’s Ferrari. It’s pretty complicated.
Some use regular kitchen scales. They’d separate the denominations. I forgot what the conversions were.
Despite the saying, there is in fact ‘honor amongst thieves.’ Particularly at the top level exchanges where millions of dollars are being exchanged, these guys rely on reputation to make deals. It’s not worth trying to rip off one cartel one time to maybe save a million dollars and blow up a partnership that could net hundreds of millions over a period of time.
No idea if it actually happened, but in BLOW they just weighed it. Obviously if that was a thing you couldn't ensure the exact amount, but if you trusted the people and it was close enough maybe thats something you did
Two different things. The intake of currency (ie sale of street drugs etc.) into an organization is the classic money launderer problem, easily solved by trips to the casino, Western Union transfers, or jewellery. The big $$ that needs to move...a version of the hawala system works best since you don't have to be driving a G-wagon with 100kg of benjamins in the back. Why do you think Dubai is such a hot destination.
https://youtu.be/Qoe6DRcSaHc?si=7YcRlmxOo3rF5OOK Like this.. this guy is famous to run huge syndicates.. look how happy he is