The Key to $10 Billion in Human Smuggling from Mexico? Big US Banks Michael Smith and Esme E. Deprez - Bloomberg News
go to original January 19, 2015

In this rare interview,, a Honduran coyote in San Pedro Sula agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. What he told us offers a unique glimpse of the shadowy world of human smuggling. (Fusion)

Dionisio Diaz, a 37-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, hired a gang of human smugglers, or coyotes, who got him across the U.S. border to a stash house in Mesa, Arizona, and then on to Georgia, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its February issue. Diaz paid for part of the trip using one of America’s biggest banks, Wells Fargo & Co.

It’s a story repeated over and over as waves of illegal immigrants stream into the U.S. from Latin America. Gangs reap $10 billion a year from about 3 million illegal border crossings from Mexico, according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime.

Major banks, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo, have been used as financial conduits for the smuggling industry, according to evidence in a federal criminal case against a gang of 15 human smugglers and warrants from prosecutors in Arizona, Maryland and Texas.

“Human smuggling is a big business,” says Stephen Adaway, chief of the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations unit for human smuggling in Washington. “And they couldn’t operate on the scale they do without the banks.”

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