Customer Reviews

Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators, Second Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a Canadian police officer, I picked up this book expecting to find its understandable American focus to be of limited use to me. Instead I was very surprised. Yes it is entirely American in focus and reference, but its explanation of laundering methodologies - and weaknesses - was exceptionally straight forward and of universal application. I was able to apply several aspects immediately to an existing international investigation of commercial fraud.

It is in its explanations that the book is strongest. These are simply written, without jargon. For example, using the analogy of Al Capone's enterprises, it gives the best and simplest description of a balance sheet and financial statement and what goes into their makeup that I have ever seen. When this began I was suspicious that the Capone analogy was going to have to be stretched beyond any usefulness, but this turned out not to be the case at all. In fact, the analogy gave the explanations life and character.

Its outline of resources, to consider was equally direct and useful, even to a Canadian investigation.

Do not waste your time or money on this book. The book assumes that all readers have the financial literacy of a high school student. Of course, the book was purportly written for police investigations so maybe the authors dummed it down so their fellow law enforcement friends would be able to understand it. For example, the book goes into painly silly details about what a balance sheet and income statement are all about and how to read them properly. (ie the section on debit-credit was particularly useless) My personal favorite was the filler section on how to buy real-estate or securities. The book only really gets to the interesting(and the most imporant aspect of a book on money laundering) "how to" structures of money laundering operations in a couple of chapters. One chapter is basically dedicated to simple structures like using smurfs so that is essentially useless. BOTTOM LINE: if you are at all familar with money laundering, financial statements, bank secrecy act, tax rules, yadda yadda, then this book is a waste of your time. If you know nothing about the above, then you may find the book useful.

The text provides excellent introduction into the crime of money laundering...very easy to understand and at times comical. Although the book is a bit dated, its concepts remain the same and I would recommend this text for anyone interested in understanding the role of money laundering.

I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn more about AML and the background behind the issues we face.

This is more than a text book. It's a excellent primer in money laundering. It gives examples from the most simple to the most complex methods of hiding illegally obtained money from the prying eyes of law enforcement. I could have used this early in my career. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the how's of money launderers. A second edition is now out.

being the same field for over 30 years, i found the book lacking in real facts.......but an excellent effort for 76.00 dollars

you both sound like world renown experts on money laundering. those racketeers don't stand a chance against the two of you.