And once you can get it into the banking system clean, you can do whatever you want with it. The difficulty in tracking money once it has left the country, experts say, makes stopping it at the border all the more important. But to many people willing to serve as couriers, carrying cash doesn't seem like a crime. Indeed, penalties for cash smuggling are far lighter than for transporting drugs. As a result, customs officials say, more people are willing to transport cash, making them more difficult to identify.
Experience has shown that there is no typical courier, they say.
Reyeros, the customs official in Newark, understands the temptations. A native of Colombia, he knows that for the price of an airline ticket or a few thousand dollars, criminal financiers have little trouble recruiting immigrants from countries with low wages and little opportunity. We're never going to get Mr. Money Launderer. We're only going to get the poor individual who was in need at the time . Rodriguez, the woman who wore the wetsuit, was sitting in a park in Queens, where her sister lives, when a Colombian man struck up a conversation and asked her to carry the money, said her attorney, Lorraine S. Gauli-Rufo.