In recent years, those in the financial investigation community
have had to deal with the question, what is cuckoo smurfing in
money laundering?
This technique has been used by a number of criminal
organisations including drug traffickers, terrorist financiers and
in complex frauds.
It allows money obtained through illegal activities to be washed
by hiding the transactions as international legal activities of
non-doubtful bank customers.
How Does Cuckoo Smurfing Work?
Cuckoo smurfing involves the money launderer splitting large
transactions into multiple small transactions to avoid
detection.
In Australia, banks are required to provide threshold
transaction reports for any cash transfers of $10,000 or more by
the national regulator, AUSTRAC. Bearing this in mind, it is no
surprise that criminals seek to break up large sums of money into
numerous small transactions of less than $10,000.
