He carried with him a satchel full of cash and a dark secret: He was a key player in a suspected global money-laundering scheme – one that catered to high-rolling Chinese gamblers and that investigators would later tie to some of the world’s most dangerous criminal gangs.
For years, authorities have battled an illicit black market for US dollars fueled by strict Chinese government restrictions on its citizens. Affluent Chinese nationals looking to bypass those rules pay middlemen to procure millions in cash – often sourced from Mexican cartels looking to rinse clean their illicit profits from fentanyl and other drug sales.
