Question: What's the Balance in My Credit Card Account? Cavos Metdolas is a money laundering organization for a drug cartel in Wisconsin and Illinois. A money laundering method that Cavos Metdolas has been using is to prepay, from an Internet bank account, balances on credit cards controlled by the organization. Visa and MasterCard will send refund checks back to the credit card holder when the positive balances remain unused. The card owners have addresses that are listed in Argentina, Colombia, and the United States.
Once these checks are received from the credit card companies, they are deposited into legitimized accounts. Cavos Metdolas has been using up to 1,000 credit cards in this scheme. There are only 30 different "real" card owners. Cavos Metdolas has a private banking relationship with First Bank of Boston through its Brazilian shell company, Perzola. Staff are able to write checks from the Perzola account within U.S. borders using their shell company's correspondent account at First Bank of Boston. What would be the weakest point in this money laundering scheme?