Did Brinks Assist Money Laundering?

Brinks just paid a $37 million fine for willful violations of the Ban Secrecy Act. As a result of Brink’s failures, hundreds of millions of dollars in bulk currency shipments were transmitted across the Mexican border. Some of these shipments were for high-risk entities, including a Mexican currency exchanger that pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act.

FinCEN points out that this is the first enforcement action against an armored car company.

“Money Services Businesses” are subject to high scrutiny because they can be abused for money laundering. One category of Money Service Business is a “money transmitter.” In this digital age of currency, we think of wire services and digital transfers. Of course there is also the physical transmission of money. That’s been Brink’s specialty for over 150 years.

There are exceptions for this regulatory treatment and conditional relief. The shipment has to be domestic and it can’t be provided on behalf of a third party. It also requires the transporter to take reasonable steps to obtain information from the shipper about the origination of the cash.

According to the Consent Order, Brink’s facilitated the shipment of approximately $800 million of bulk currency transactions as an unregistered MSB over the course of two years (i) enabling crossborder currency shipments involving Mexico, Spain, and the United States, and (ii) facilitating domestic currency shipments.

[A] Senior Account Executive was concerned about a representation that the relevant shipments flown from Mexico into San Diego arrived on “Flight # BGS 352.. clearly not a real flight” (emphasis in original). The Senior Account Executive also raised concerns regarding whether “KYC on-boarding should be performed [on the currency originator, GPOMCT,] . . . , [h]ow well [does] Brink’s know what [GPOMCT’s] AML policy is, . . . [w]here/who is the source of funds, . . .” and who should “be reviewing it,” especially given that the shipments involved “a lot of cash from Mexico coming from a non-banking entity and going to another nonbanking entity.”

According to the Consent Order, in one instance “A Brink’s senior manager in Los Angeles expressed confusion over the origin of these funds, which had been transported over the U.S.-Mexico border and dropped off by Armored Car Service 2 (ACS 2) at the Brink’s location in San Diego without accompanying instructions or explanation of the purpose of the transaction.” Brinks still went ahead and transported the cash to Miami.

A Brink’s Senior Account Executive thought some of the cash movements “seemed a bit fishy.”

The Consent Order does not specifically tie Brink’s to any criminals. It’s couched more as willful ignorance.

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