Some people are horrible liars. Like the American Airlines flight attendant who got a little nervous when questioned by customs officials in Miami. The result was four flight attendants arrested for money laundering.
After arriving from Santiago (SCL), immigration officers asked AA flight attendant Carlos Alberto Munoz Moyano if he was carrying cash. He replied that he was carrying $100. Immigration officers pushed back and Munoz Moyano changed his story to $9,000.
Clearly not an innocent mistake, the flight attendant was directed to secondary screening for a more thorough search. Agents were alerted and began probing other members of the AA flight crew.
Soon enough, three other flight attendants were pulled aside and all four eventually arrested. Together, the flight attendants were carrying $22,671 in cash. They now face money laundering charges.
An American spokesperson declined to discuss the specifics, but did tell USA Today:
We take this matter seriously and are cooperating with law enforcement throughout their investigation.
The Motive?
Chile is currently experiencing civil unrest. Protests have been ongoing across the country over economic inequality, which started when subway fare hikes were proposed in Santiago. Although the planned fare hikes were rescinded, protests continue and over 10,000 soldiers and federal troops have been patrolling the streets of Santiago.
The civil unrest has caused the Chilean peso to plummet in value. It is likely that the flight attendants were part of an effort to remove recently-exchanged currency from the country.
What About The $10,000/Person Limit?
One thing that is not clear to me in this case is why the flight attendants were busted in the first place. The legal limit is $10,000/person into the USA…amounts falling under that threshold do not require reporting.
But there’s a twist in the rules. Money, if it belongs to one person, cannot be split up among several to circumvent the $10,000 limit. For example, if I wanted to bring in $12,000 into the USA, I could not give $6K to my son and we each do not declare anything.
This is just speculation, but it may be that the flight attendants actually admitted to laundering money during their detention when it was revealed that their “accounting trick” of splitting up the money was not acceptable.
CONCLUSION
The truth usually has a way of coming out. Here, it happened when one flight attendant became a bit flustered when answering questions. it is naive to assume that this sort of thing does not happen on a daily basis, especially in Miami (with apologies to my readers from South Florida). But suddenly remembering you have an extra $8,900 in your carry-on bag is a great way to secure a cavity search…
So, let me see if I got this straight. It is OK to move large amounts of money out of Chile if you give it to a bunch of Smurfs and they put less than $10,000 in their bags and you arrange an Uber driver to meet them on arrival and the Smurfs and/or Smurfettes all forget their bags in the car. Come on people, this is Miami where money laundering is an art form – where did they find these rank amateurs? Its people like this that give money laundering a bad name! Scarface is probably rolling over in his grave.
Wow. Customs got even 4 people and a total amount of $ 22.671. Disaster clearly has been prevented.
It would be more helpful for Customs in Miami to work out how to process people faster so the bottleneck to exiting the airport will be removed.
Back in my day would would just stick the money up our bums.
I guess the cavity search will be the least of their worries!
what’s with all the “M”‘s in their names? Was that a requirement?
This behavior is very typical of people from those countries.
What is money laundering anyway? I thought it refers only to ILL-earned money being blend into the banking system of the United States.
Many foreign tourists carry money to be spent in Latin American countries. Is that money laundering too?
I assume they are all SCL-based FAs?
Ridiculous laws which do nothing but harm innocent people. So customs cares about how people move money (as long as it is not stolen) yet we have millions of illegals pouring into this country who commit a disproportionately high amount of violent crime and they are focusing on bringing down 4 people for carrying 22 grand out of a country in turmoil. This is the hallmark of government and bureaucracy and people who blindly follow orders to implement laws of corrupt and morally bankrupt politicians: always doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
Some years ago when entering into US Government Form I-94 asked if a passenger was carrying more than ten thousand dollars into US, meaning less was permitted.
Suppose these attendants because of the current political situation in their country each carried their life-time savings to open an account in amounts less than ten thousand. Is that a crime?
Customs are giving them grounds to easily sue them and all the news media, aren’t they?
Where did AA find these people? (Please please don’t tell me that any of them were ex EA or BN FAs!)
I don’t know that it has anything to do with the laws….because they did not break any ,if what I have read about above is correct. It sounds more like overzealous workers who love a bit of power over others. You see it everywhere. So sad.
This is a ridiculous law that should be scrapped. Or at least adjusted up to somewhere well into the six figures. All it does is give government officials a license to confiscate money that isn’t theirs – without any right of due process being conferred to the ‘victim’. And don’t say it’s “anti drug” or “anti terrorist” because neither narcos, nor terrorists are going to be playing around with smuggling a mere $10k. No serious ones, at least. That’s just an excuse to continue confiscating money at customs and keeping it.
Other countries have similar laws. Bringing in money is not prohibited, you just have to declare it. There are fines for not declaring. There must be more to this story to get this charge of laundering.