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In one of the largest cash heists in Los Angeles history, thieves made off with as much as $30 million in an Easter Sunday burglary at a San Fernando Valley money storage facility, an L.A. police official revealed Wednesday.
The burglary occurred Sunday night at a facility in Sylmar where cash from businesses across the region is handled and stored, according to L.A. Police Department Cmdr. Elaine Morales.
The burglars were able to breach the building as well as the safe where the money was stored, Morales said. Law enforcement sources said the break-in was among the largest burglaries in city history when it comes to cash, and the total surpassed any armored-car heist in the city as well.
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The money launderer, who charges a hefty fee to clients to exchange cash for gold and other currencies, has been operating via Heathrow to Dubai - the former doesn't scan outbound luggage for cash, while the latter welcomes sacks of it. They're also the #1 and #2 of the world's busiest airports for international passengers.
The UK mandates passengers declare amounts exceeding $10,000 to customs authorities. Larvin, however, risked arrest by not disclosing her precious cargo, not that anyone would notice. The suitcases slid through Heathrow's baggage-handling system and its 3-D scanner, designed to detect explosives rather than contraband currency.
The next morning in Dubai, the women calmly collected their bags, declaring $2.8 million at customs, a practice fully permitted by UAE law. While the UAE allows any amount of cash to enter its borders, the laxity of international airports in monitoring money flows has created a loophole, one exploited by money launderers worldwide.
Each year, more than $2 trillion in proceeds from illegal enterprises enters the global financial system, with a significant portion smuggled across borders by air. According to estimates by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Financial Action Task Force, "hundreds of billions in illicit cash" fly out of the UK and other nations to countries with fewer regulations.
One of the reasons for so much airline smuggling is that banks around the globe have stepped up the reporting of suspicious transactions, making it more difficult to launder money using traditional wire transfers. So it's back to even more traditional ways of money laundering.
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