Follow the Deposits: How Law Enforcement Traced the Money Trail Through Banks

A Billion-Dollar Criminal Web Unraveled by Patterns of Cash, Banking Behavior, and Cross-Border Coordination

headlines May 16, 2025

Follow the Deposits: How Law Enforcement Traced the Money Trail Through Banks

LOS ANGELES — When federal investigators began piecing together a billion-dollar international money laundering scheme tied to drug cartels and Chinese underground banking networks, they didn’t start with wiretaps or undercover agents. They started with something simple: bank deposits.

By meticulously following the deposits, law enforcement traced a tangled web of illicit finance across multiple continents, connected violent cartels to transnational actors, and exposed systemic weaknesses in the U.S. banking system. The investigation, now considered a blueprint for modern financial crime detection, underscores how even sophisticated criminal operations leave digital footprints—if you know where to look.

This is the story of how narcotics profits moved from the streets of Chicago to bank counters in Los Angeles and then out into the global underground banking system—and how U.S. agents followed the money, transaction by transaction, until the entire network unraveled.

The Breakthrough: Deposits, Not Drugs

The case began in late 2021, not with a drug seizure or border intercept, but with a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filed by a compliance officer at a Chase branch in Monterey Park, California. A series of structured deposits, each under $10,000, raised questions. The client, listed as the owner of a “lighting import business,” deposited over $600,000 in cash in under 10 days, often at different branches and through multiple couriers.

The SAR was forwarded to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen), which noted similar patterns across three other major banks, all tied to different front companies but matching deposit behaviours: small incremental cash entries, branch hopping, and little or no withdrawal activity.

What started as one SAR turned into 120 coordinated red flags, and a federal task force—composed of the DEA, HSI, IRS-CI, and FBI—was launched under the codename “Operation Wire Vein.”

Mapping the Laundering Pipeline: How the Deposits Spoke

Using SAR data, internal bank transaction records, and subpoenaed communications, federal analysts created a behavioural deposit map revealing the laundering pattern:

U.S. drug cash collected in bulk by cartel operatives in cities like Chicago, Phoenix, and Philadelphia.
Transported to California, where Chinese laundering networks received it and split it into smaller amounts.
Deposited into over 150 personal and business accounts across Los Angeles County and surrounding regions.
Funds mirrored through Chinese underground banks, with parallel value transferred in yuan inside China.
Laundered funds reemerged abroad as real estate purchases, crypto assets, and shell-company investments.

“The cash was being recycled through Main Street banks at industrial scale,” said a lead HSI agent. “By following the deposits, we didn’t just find the money. We found the people, the businesses, and the command structure.”

Case Study: The Pasadena Deposit Ring

In one operation, authorities tracked a syndicate operating out of Pasadena and Arcadia. Daily cash drops were made at 12 branches of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank. Over 18 months, more than $92 million in cash was deposited.

The trail revealed:

Fake IDS were used to open 67 accounts, many tied to students or elderly foreign nationals.
Shared courier routes—multiple depositors using the exact bank locations in the same sequence.
Cross-referenced deposits matched to bulk drug shipments arriving from Texas and Arizona.
Financial activity consistent with “mirror banking,” where no international wire transfers occurred.

Agents eventually intercepted a courier in Glendale with $340,000 in a gym bag. His phone showed route maps to six bank branches and recent WeChat messages from contacts in Guangzhou and Tijuana.

Technology and Coordination: The Power of Pattern Recognition

With the help of FinCen’s intelligence-sharing portal, law enforcement built a network model of account linkages, identifying key nodes and laundering clusters. AI-assisted software flagged:

High-frequency, low-volume deposits made in similar amounts across multiple branches.
Sudden cash inflows in businesses with no commercial footprint.
Deposit “bursts” following narcotics seizures elsewhere in the country.

The investigation revealed that cartel money was being laundered faster than it was being seized and that law enforcement’s best tool was not border surveillance but banking data.

Real-World Impact: The Busts That Followed

Between 2023 and 2025, following the financial trail led to more than 60 arrests and indictments across four states. Among those prosecuted:

Liu “Tony” Zhang, a laundering broker operating a massage parlour in El Monte as a front, was responsible for over $110 million in deposits.
Jessica Li, a USC student, was charged with using five fake businesses to launder cartel cash into Chinese luxury real estate.
Miguel Ramos, a mid-level cartel operator, was caught laundering heroin proceeds through a series of ATM deposits by homeless individuals paid in fentanyl.

In total, over $1.1 billion in illicit transactions were identified. Over $78 million in assets, including cryptocurrency wallets, homes in Irvine and San Diego, 19 vehicles, and 45 luxury watches, were seized.

Amicus International Consulting: Tracking Risk Before It Reaches the Banks

In light of the case, financial institutions and international businesses have turned to Amicus International Consulting, which offers sophisticated tools for identifying high-risk clients, enhancing AML frameworks, and protecting legitimate enterprises from reputational and regulatory damage.

Amicus provides:

Real-time behavioural deposit analysis
Cross-border compliance structuring
Forensic auditing of shell corporations
Legal second citizenship and offshore banking for lawful asset protection
Custom AML risk training for banks and financial institutions

“Our approach is built on visibility,” said a senior Amicus consultant. “If you can follow the deposits, you can disrupt the operation before it embeds itself in your institution.”

Lessons Learned: Deposits as Digital DNA

This case proves that cash deposits, long considered mundane financial activity, are a rich source of investigative data. Each deposit carries with it:

A location
A time stamp
A behavioural signature
A human decision

By compiling, comparing, and contextualizing these entries, law enforcement turned ledgers into blueprints for criminal networks.

A Call for Systemic Reform

Despite the case’s success, officials caution that such schemes are still active and evolving.

Recommended reforms include:

Mandatory inter-bank SAR sharing for patterns across institutions.
Enhanced KYC (Know Your Customer) for accounts with frequent deposits but no business history.
Advanced behavioural analytics tied to suspicious cash volumes.
Faster subpoena turnaround windows for real-time interdiction.

“Following the deposits shouldn’t be the last resort,” said one DOJ official. “It should be the first line of defence.”