Money launderers use real estate, mortgage loans to do their dirty business in South Florida | Opinion

A little over 37 years ago, TIME magazine published its “Paradise Lost” issue, depicting South Florida as home to drugs dealers and narco-traffickers that, aside from their heinous crimes, flushed our part of the world with their dirty money and tarnished Miami’s reputation for decades.

Accomplices to their nefarious endeavors were those banks who aided these criminal enterprises in hiding and legitimizing their ill-gained profits, perpetuating a fraud that destabilized our local economy and led to an inflationary environment that took Miami many years to recover from.

In recent years, South Florida has been slowly and stealthy falling under the shadow of a new set of moneychangers who bring with them the same villainous intentions, this time with real estate and mortgage loans replacing what went through the banks in the 1980s.

Cartels of offshore shell companies disguising themselves as legitimate entities participate in real estate transactions to circumvent U.S. Treasury and the state of Florida’s rules with an aim to launder and import dollars into the U.S. without disclosing their origination.