Chinese organized crime is becoming an increasing problem in the United States, with gangs involved in sectors ranging from illicit drugs to fraud.
Here are some of the major categories of crimes being committed by Chinese nationals:
Drug cartels
The Justice Department this week announced that 24 people were charged in connection to a scheme involving Los Angeles-based associates of the Sinaloa drug cartel allegedly conspiring with Chinese underground bankers to launder drug trafficking money in the U.S.
Since 2021, more than $50 million in drug proceeds have passed between the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most powerful and violent drug trafficking groups in the world, and Chinese underground money laundering, according to the indictment. The Sinaloa Cartel is the primary gang responsible for the recent influx of fentanyl into the U.S., and for the accompanying increase in violence at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Wealthy Chinese nationals who live in China drove the scheme, as they looked to evade their country’s law that bars them from transferring more than $50,000 a year out of China. “Drug traffickers increasingly have partnered with Chinese underground money exchanges to take advantage of the large demand for U.S. dollars from Chinese nationals,” the Justice Department said.
It’s not just on the finance side of drugs, either. Chinese organized gangs are “dominating” the illegal marijuana market in the U.S., according to an investigation earlier this year by ProPublica.
The Chinese mafias have operated in Oklahoma since 2018, when the state legalized medical marijuana. There is no limit on the number of growing operations, and now, regulators say that the industry is second only to oil and gas in the state.
Oklahoma is the top supplier of illegal marijuana, which is estimated to generate between $18 billion and $44 billion a year. Foreign mafias – more than 80% of which originated in China – have been linked to more than 3,000 illegal growing operations in Oklahoma, state investigators found.
“The profits from the marijuana trade allow the Chinese organized criminal networks to expand their underground global banking system for cartels and other criminal organizations,” former senior DEA official Donald Im said.
Please read more at the below link:
https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/chinese-organized-crime-increasingly-becomes-issue-us
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