Those criminals were … DISHONEST!

Ever wonder what happened to the infamous “Treasure of Sierra Madre 515” — the loot hidden in the Chinese-owned meth warehouse slash bank vault slash money laundry in Lomas de Chapultepec? A few million pesos, € 201,406 and 204,105,676 yankee dollars were stashed in the house, along with various trucks, firearms, and… natch… meth.

Nuevo Excelsior reports on the whereabouts of the cash. Normally, the Mexican Soldiers and Sailors Bank — Banjército — takes physical custody in asset seizures by the Federal Prosecutor — but this was a larger amount of foreign currency than they could deal with. At least that’s the official explanation.

Besides, Bank of America offered a better interest rate, even though they did charge $1,438,960 just to transfer the cash and count the U.S. currency. The Euros and pesos went to Banjército.

I half suspect that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency — based on the ridiculous claim that some Mexican policemen were trained using DEA materials, therefore the DEA is entitled to a cut of the assets seized (which are supposed to be split evenly among the Federal Court, the Prosecutors’ Office and the Health Department (for drug treatment programs) — STILL wants a cut. The money being transferred to the U.S. based bank gives the U.S. a sneaky way of syphoning off some of it.

Ah well. The interest so far on those Bank of America deposits has been over 1.6 million dollars. And that’s after the bank found something funny about all that cash. Who’d have thought that the criminals would have been stuck with $21,090 in counterfeit dollars?

[http://digg.com/world_news/Why_those_criminals_were_dishonest/blog]