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Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent, Deatiled and Highly Informative Work!
Review: I became acquainted with James R. Richard's Transnational Criminal Organizations, Cybercrime, and Money Laundering : A Handbook for Law Enforcement Officers, Auditors, and Financial Investigators when it was used as a text in Utica College's Economic Crime Management Master of Science Degree program in the Advanced Economic Crime as well as the Legal Concepts of Criminal Fraud and Corporate Criminal Liability graduate courses. After quickly thumbing through it, I immediately recognized that it truly contains a bounty of useful, pertinent and relevant information.Extremely well written, it is a well flowing, very easy read that is both highly informative and enlightening. The book provides a very extensive and detailed examination of organized criminal enterprises engaged in international financial crime. The book fully details the specific steps of the placement, layering, and integration stages of money laundering as well as fully itemizing the techniques and uses of non-financial institutions (casinos, securities et al.) in money laundering. The expanded international focus documents a very detailed and thorough examination of the scope of global financial crime. The book fully integrates an expanse of information on banking, money laundering and cybercrime basics, international criminal organizations - in both a national and international context - in a manner that is easily understood by the reader. As a police officer, I would highly recommend this book as a "must have" for the reference shelf of federal, state, local or corporate based investigators engaged in financial crimes inquiries and analysis. For the non-professional who is interested in organized crime of a more cerebral nature, the book is more than worth the purchase price. As a college instructor (Introduction to Economic Crime Investigation at Herkimer County Community College; Herkimer, NY), this book in invaluable to the both the instructor and the student engaged in a comprehensive review of money laundering actvities. As a side note, Mr. Richards also gives an excellent presentation and lecture on the topics and subject matter covered in his book.
Rating:
Summary: A very good choice!
Review: My father wrote this book. Even though I am only eleven years old I already want his job. I love to read and learn and I am very interested in this field. I read his book and I can finally understand what he's talking about at the dinner table! He now tells me about his cases in the car and I love hearing about them. This book helped me learn about things I wouldn't have learned about in college. It really opened my eyes to what was out there. Good work daddy! PS - Your kids books that you wrote for us are just as good! Publish them!
Rating:
Summary: A very good choice!
Review: My father wrote this book. Even though I am only eleven years old I already want his job. I love to read and learn and I am very interested in this field. I read his book and I can finally understand what he's talking about at the dinner table! He now tells me about his cases in the car and I love hearing about them. This book helped me learn about things I wouldn't have learned about in college. It really opened my eyes to what was out there. Good work daddy! PS - Your kids books that you wrote for us are just as good! Publish them!
Rating: 
Summary: The "Who, What, Why, and Where" of Money Laundering!
Review: This 300 page book was written by a law enforcement professional for other law enforcement professionals and those interested in international crime and money laundering -- students, auditors, bank regulators, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. It is a nuts-and-bolts look at the entire world of money laundering, organized in a simple, clean way. The first part of the book focuses on "The Bad Guys." These included the "Big Six" international criminal organizations, including the Mafia, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Colombian Drug Cartels, the Mexican Federation, and the Russian "Mafiya." The second part of the book looks at money laundering basics, from the three steps (placement. layering, and integration), to the use of the internet and computers to launder money, to basic laundering schemes, and laundering in the banking sector and laundering through "non-bank financial institutions" such as casinos, securities firms, casas de cambio, and insurance companies. The third part of the book looks at "The Good Guys," the U.S. federal agencies involved in the ongoing battle against international crime, drug trafficking, and money laundering, as well as the banking and financial sector regulatory agencies. Part 4 looks at the tools available to these agencies -- the money laundering and banking statutes, the RICO statute, the asset forfeiture statutes -- as well as law enforcement operations and investigative techniques. Finally, the fifth part of the book focuses on the "World Stage," with descriptions of a number of international regulatory and law enforcement agencies and detailed reviews of the major "money laundering nations" of Canada, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, and Russia. The book concludes with short, but thorough, descriptions of 50 other nations. All five parts of the book include interesting quotes and facts to illustrate the points being made, and I have tried, as much as possible, to keep the book as interesting and informative as possible.Why did I choose this format? There are lots of books, papers, and reports out there . . . some on money laundering, written by academics or lawyers, intended for academics or lawyers. Other books cover computers and cybercrime, but are written by computer experts and are (believe me) better left for the consumption of other computer experts! What I have tried to do is put all of the pieces together -- banking, money laundering basics, international criminal organizations -- in a national and international context and in a style that anyone can understand.I hope you enjoy the book . . . I have lectured on these subjects in Russia (with the Treasury Department's Federal Law Enforcement Training Center), at Harvard University, and for the Massachusetts State Police. These materials have formed the basis for all of my talks. I know that you will find them helpful.
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Summary: should be a bestseller
Review: This book isn't just for enforcement people. For someone like me who isn't a law officer and just wants to understand how terrorists and drug traffickers work, this book is great. I always thought of terrorism and drugdealing in simplistic terms of what happens in the street. Now I understand how the system works and why our fight is so unsuccessful. What I learned:
Our laws change slowly in response to rapid innovation by the traffickers and terrorists. Horse-and-buggy standards for banks like "know your customer" are pointless in a modern world economy. The worldwide supply of drugs is variegated and impossible to control. As a result, our approach to fighting drugs by cooperating with drug-producing countries is stupid. My guess is that a bread-and-butter approach of customs inspections and death penalty for dealers and launderers would work better. The mindset of modern law enforcement is dead wrong. As icing on the cake, it was interesting to learn that the Afghanis, Arabs, and Iranians who attack America for our moral degeneration are number 1 in heroin production and smuggling. A few disappointments: Richards barely treated terrorists. If he had, his book would have had more mass appeal. Some of the explanations would have been clearer with flow diagrams. I still don't understand why layering is so effective. It sounds as if a simple computer trace would unpeel the layers. This book is not light reading. But if you really want to know how the world works, it's worth the effort!
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