You put it in the middle and there's cushioning. Smugglers, of course, aim to make finding the money as difficult as possible, agents say. Large cloth bags bulging with an assortment of small dime-store items naturally raise suspicion. Many times, when it's a large amount, you don't have to work that hard to find it. Any passenger on any flight Inspectors at Newark say that any flight and any passenger could be hiding cash.
Records show, however, that routes to Colombia and Mexico yield far more seizures than others.
Nineteen 19 percent was bound for Mexico. The Dominican Republic, a transit and distribution point for drugs from Colombia, ranked a distant third among smuggling destinations, followed by Venezuela and Ecuador. No firm figures exist for the amount of money from drugs, organized crime, and financial fraud that is laundered through banks and businesses or smuggled out of the United States each year. Authorities believe the flow has ballooned to tens of billions. With the passage of money laundering laws aimed at keeping the cash out of banks and businesses, and a sweeping crackdown on electronic wire remitters in New York, smuggling remains a low-tech method of disposing of dirty cash.