Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators

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Summary: How this book can benefit the criminal investigator.
Review: "Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators" was written primarily for those in the criminal justice field, but also for people who are also interested in how the proceeds of crime are disposed of around the world. At a time when not just criminals but the leaders of entire countries are suspected of laundering money (Russia's recent problems come to mind.) this is not a topic we in law enforcement can afford to ignore. Money is, after all, at the root of most criminal activity. "Money Laundering" attempts to explain the subject in terms the average law enforcement or prosecutor can understand and appreciate. One needn't be an accountant to absorb the information in these chapters, and there are lots of tables, graphs and photographs to help illustrate the key points. We also attempted to make the subject as interesting as possible, using examples from history that take the reader into money laundering schemes such as those used by Captain Kidd, Al Capone, and the Lindbergh kidnapper. The result, we hope, is both informative and entertaining.

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Summary: An excellent nuts and bolts introduction.
Review: 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.

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Summary: author is excellent at public safety
Review: being the same field for over 30 years, i found the book lacking in real facts.......but an excellent effort for 76.00 dollars

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Summary: Money Laundering for the Stupid.
Review: 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.

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Summary: congrats to john and sydney- published authors & experts
Review: you both sound like world renown experts on money laundering. those racketeers don't stand a chance against the two of you.