At the height of the cocaine boom, the Fed found Florida had a $5.5 billion cash surplus while the rest of the country ran a deficit. The first Miami bank to fall paid 40 cents per $100. Joe Rogan says they got away with it
Below, Ben Affleck asks it himself: "is there some statistic about like, you know, the amount of money in the banks..."
Rogan's answer: they were "just laundering money." Matt Damon describes "Cessnas underwater" off Bimini, where smugglers would "crash the plane into the water" on purpose and scatter 10 cigarette boats.
Banks had to report every cash deposit over $10,000, yet in 1979 all US banks filed about 129,000 reports. In Miami alone, 12 people were each depositing $250 million or more a year, an IRS investigator told PBS.
The record is narrower. Great American Bank of Dade County pleaded guilty in 1984, and a loan officer and two tellers were convicted, two years before laundering became a federal crime.
By 2016 the rule had teeth. The raid behind The Rip, their new movie, found $22 million in Home Depot buckets in an attic. The owner kept his deposits under $10,000 and got 65 months.
Worked out. $500,000 fine minus $125,000 suspended = $375,000 paid $375,000 / $94 million = 40 cents per $100
The case for the banks: in 1979 almost nobody enforced the rule, and a bank that refused the bags would have sent them next door.
$94 million through a bank: a $375,000 fine. $22 million in an attic: 65 months.
When drug cash runs through a bank, should the bill go to the bank or to the bankers who took the bags?