Anti Money Laundering Blog

A former world champion in boxing, Kendall Holt, has pleaded guilty to a money laundering charge in New Jersey.

According to prosecutors, the charge against Kendall Holt of Woodland Park came from drug deals that were carried out by champion’s manager, Henry Cortes. Cortes pleaded guilty to drug cases in February.

On April 24, 27-year-old Holt said that several times in 2007 and 2008 he picked up bags of money and delivered them to his manager. He also admitted he knew that the money came from drug transactions.

In July, a famous boxer won the WBO light welterweight title. On April 4, he lost a unification bout to WBC champ Timothy Bradley on April 4, 2009.

Allegations carried by a UK daily have been denied by Dubai police. The Independent claimed that Dubai has been laundering the ransom money belonging to Somali pirates.

The Deputy Commander in Chief of Dubai Maj Gen Khamis Mattar Al-Mazinah in a statemet denied the allegations published by the paper that a large amount of money that was taken in ransom from hijacked vessels were being laundered in Dubai and other Gulf countries.

Around USD 80 million has been paid out in ransom to Somali pirates in 2008.

In his statement to the Arabic daily Al-Emarat Al-Youm, Mr Al-Mazinah said that the British paper’s report was baseless and untruthful and stressed that the UAE was the only state in the region to prosecute money launderers and issue rulings against them.

British cops swooped on a suspect in a van in Dover and found the appliance in the back. When removed, the mechanism revealed lots of cash hidden inside. There were hundreds of thousands of GBP stuffed into the washing machine.

The investigation moved to London’s East End where a second van was found. Several more washing machines were found in this van – these were also stuffed with cash.

Also, GBP 20 000 in cash was found at the London address.

According to the police, 2 Moroccan men and a Polish woman have been charged with money laundering.

So, that’s the funny example of using a washing machine to launder money.

On April 6, the notorious Apple scammer who tricked a world-famous company out of 9 000 iPod shuffles, named Nicholas Woodhams, pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and money laundering in federal court.

A 23-year-old scammer ran an iPod Mechanic repair shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He developed a scheme aimed to take advantage of Apple’s warranty program by means of using bogus serial numbers in order to get 9 000 iPod replacements without returning the originals.

As Apple’s return policy requires to ship the defective unit back to the company, Nicholas Woodhams worked out a plan that involved pre-paid VISA gift cards and a UPS Store mailbox. As a result, the scammer managed to get around this rule. When Apple tried to charge for the unreturned item, the VISA cards rejected the charges. So, the plan worked well and Woodhams succeeded to get 9 000 free iPod Shuffles, which he sold through his website.

Woodhams is to be sentenced, but he has already agreed to give up property that was obtained through his fraudulent scheme, including a house, cars, and more than USD 57 000 in cash.