Dark Path – Book 8

Dark Hunt was a tough slog for me. I had to learn a lot about money laundering, watching movies, reading books and lots of Internet articles. Laundering can be as simple as taking money you made from a side gig and depositing along with money from your regular job and purchasing an asset such as gold, a house, art, or cars with it, then reselling whatever you bought. That money is now clean and reported to the government. I know that sounds overly simple but that’s what it is. I had difficulty writing Ryan out of jambs I’d put him in because neither of us knew what the hell we were doing. In the end, he prevails as always. I did something a little different, I wanted the bad guy to be a complete mystery and not known to Ryan or the reader until the end. I won’t spoil anything else for you, but ….

My antagonist bought arms from the Russians, overpaid for them and got a kick back (the money he overpaid). That money was moved through multiple accounts into tax shelters or havens, then used to purchase businesses or a luxury penthouse. If he had cash he moved it through a strip club which deposits high volumes of cash (or used to before everyone started using mobile banking apps like Venmo or even Paypal). After the cash was deposited it was used to purchase other things then those were sold for cash again making the money clean in the eyes of the government.

The U.S. government and many others around the world started cracking down heavily on money laundering during the 80s when cash flowed like water through Miami to Colombia where guys like Pablo Escobar had cash stacked in suitcases or buried in treasure troves. You can watch a movie called American Made about Barry Seal, a real life smuggler. (2017, staring Tom Cruise) or Finding Escobar’s Millions to see how Pablo hid his wealth. Those were some paranoid dudes. The government really began to ramp up detection and prosecution of money laundering after 9/11 and using the flow of money to find terrorists and freeze their funds to prevent them from using those funds for operations.

If you’ve read the news or followed anything coming out of Venezuela, you know that American mercenaries went into VZ try to start a revolution and overthrow President Maduro who the U.S. has indicted on money laundering, narco-terrorism, and drug trafficking. Billions of dollars have flowed out of VZ during Hugo Chavez’s and Maduro’s “presidencies” – more like dictatorships. In the past months, U.S. authorities have arrested numerous individuals in Florida for assisting Venezuelans in money laundering schemes.

Everything I have written is based on reality from Ryan being accused as an American spy and tortured before being sent to prison on Margarita Island, to this tale of dark money that flows from a destitute country. Not so long ago VZ was the richest country in South America and produced and sold more Ford F150s than anywhere else in the world, now they can barely make ends meet. Despite having some of the largest oil deposits in the world, they are reliant on fuel tanks from Iran. The county is a training ground for Hezbollah, Cuba Special Forces, Russians, Iranians, and Chinese. All of them want a foothold in that country because it is at America’s doorstep with direct smuggling and shipping lines running from there to here.

A Navy officer once wrote that the Caribbean should be called America’s Lake and that the Navy should extend its military might beyond the Gulf of Mexico, making the whole Caribbean basin a U.S. jurisdiction. To some extent that has happened with the Navy working in conjunction with the Coast Guard to identify and stop drug traffickers, sex slave rings, and a whole host of other crimes. Even though we see them working with other countries, the U.S. hasn’t always done itself any favors in Central and South America, interfering in regime changes while trying to adhere to the Monroe Doctrine. Pulling aid and assistance from our southern neighbors has allowed the Chinese to gain a foothold. They own the Panama Canal and want to build another through Nicaragua. They have a Belt and Road initiative that allows them to ingratiate themselves into foreign countries and help build and pump money into infrastructure while stripping the countries of their natural wealth.

I firmly believe that if we turned the spigot of American wealth onto countries like Cuba and Venezuela we would sway them from their communist ways and allow the people to see the fruits of capitalism, but that can’t work while the news media and our young people are now espousing the tenants of socialism here in the U.S. Seeing first hand lessons in Venezuela haven’t changed their minds, but then again … well I could start into conspiracy theory here and I’m not sure you want to read it, so after this long rambling post, I’ll just say, I hope you enjoy reading Dark Path due out in October.

Evan