Pubdate: Sun, 07 Dec 2008
Source: Cyprus Mail, The (Cyprus)
Copyright: Cyprus Mail 2008
Contact:  http://www.cyprus-mail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/100
Author: Jean Christou

SWITCHING SIDES: FORMER CROOK ADVISES POLICE

'SEND a maniac to catch a maniac' was the premise of  the film Demolition Man.

Send a money launderer to catch a money launderer  describes the 
career of Kenneth Rijock who was in  Cyprus last week to advice 
bankers, lawyers and police  on the tricks he employed during his 
former career.

Decorated Vietnam vet, former banker, lawyer and ex  criminal, 
Rijock, now 59, looks just like your typical  clean-cut American 
suited-businessman or government  employee.

Then again that's probably just how he looked when he  was money 
laundering because appearance plays a large  part in what he calls 
"the tradecraft".

"Money launderers do lead, for the most part, normal,  though 
stressful, professional lives. In fact, they  strive to blend in with 
the mainstream, routine flow of  the business world, often performing 
far more  legitimate work than illicit criminal acts," said  Rijock.

"It is their legitimate persona that allays suspicion,  and allows 
them to successfully manipulate bankers,  bureaucrats, public 
functionaries and naive  businessmen."

In his online account of his ten years as a money  launderer in the 
eighties called Confessions of a Money  Launderer, Rijock says sharp 
money launderers want to  appear to be "inconspicuous, somewhat 
boring, not  overly bright or threatening, and neither excessively 
ambitious nor controversial just another typical professional".

In fact during his criminal career, Rijock once lived  with a woman 
police detective and two children.

"Typical American family, you say, lawyer and police  officer, we 
barbecued on weekends, children in  religious schools; who would 
believe that some of the  occasional visitors were drug kingpins and 
that I was  involved in major money laundering?"

Miami-based Rijock never thought he would end up where  he did, in 
prison. He never had criminal tendencies or  just 'decided' one day 
to become a criminal. It was  more of a natural progression.

Falling in with the 'wrong people' due to his 
personal  circumstances, he spoke of Miami in the late seventies  as 
"awash in a cocaine-driven economic frenzy".

"It was a never-ending story for me of nightclubs,  disco, drugs, and 
copious consumption of alcoholic  beverages," he said. "I didn't know 
it yet, but I was  soon to run headfirst into Miami's newest growth 
industry, the cocaine cowboys."

It was a turning point. He moved with Bill, another  Vietnam vet he 
met who was the same age, and whose  friends were a mixed bag of 
Americans, Cubans and  Colombians.

Rijock said Bill was a broker, a point of contact  between 
international smugglers and domestic  distributors of cocaine and 
marijuana, something he  says he was not aware of when he moved in.

"The picture began to emerge from what I was able to  piece together. 
But it didn't bother me," he said. This  was because at the time 
Rijock himself opposed the  draconian US laws on casual marijuana use.

"Whilst money launderers today are, by and large,  looking for easy 
money through high-risk criminal  conduct, I was on a mission: to do 
my part to enlarge  the drug trafficking structure through moving the 
proceeds of crime to safe harbours offshore," he said.

The second reason was his discontent with and distrust  of the 
government, which was sending young men off to  kill or be killed in 
endless wars.

As the people around him began to seek out his general  services as a 
lawyer, Rijock became more and more  involved with them on a small 
scale until the day he  was first asked to 'launder' some $8 million.

"If it had happened any earlier in my life I would have  thrown him 
out the door but at that point I really  believed in the legalisation 
of drugs," Rijock said.

"While I knew I was breaking the law, I thought I was  making my own 
statement. I really thought I was on the  right team at that time. I 
don't think that any more."

Rijock laundered the money through an offshore bank in  Anguilla in 
the Caribbean. It was followed by a lunch  of lobster and champagne, 
'officially' launching his  career, until the 'day of reckoning' 
finally came some  ten years later in 1989 when several 'associates' 
were  arrested and he feared the trail would ultimately  include him.

"You never sleep as soundly as you'd like whilst at  risk of arrest. 
One knows that those law enforcement  adversaries are out there 
somewhere, unseen, close  enough that you can sense their presence, 
or at least  think you can. It is not an experience that I 
recommend  to anyone," Rijock said.

He was forced to curtail his money laundering trips  somewhat for 
while, not knowing which one would be his  last, but he continued 
because for Rijock it was all  about 'beating the system' for as long 
as possible by  moving "all that cash into the darkness of the 
Caribbean tax havens".

The proverbial knock on the door came at his office on  a day that 
began much like any other day.

"For anyone who has not experienced the shock of being  arrested for 
what you know are surely to be serious  charges, it is an event that 
I hope you never have to  experience," he said.

"Arriving in court as a criminal defendant, in  handcuffs, and 
chained to a bunch of street-level drug  dealers, was a rude awakening."

After pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to  engage in 
racketeering, a 20-year felony, and  conspiracy to defraud the 
Internal Revenue Service, he  was sentenced to four years but 
released in 1992 after  serving 19 months.

Opportunity eventually knocked in 1994 when he received  a call from 
the intelligence division of a police  department in Florida. He 
asked Rijock to lecture on  the subject of money laundering 
tradecraft in front of  agents.

"At first, the idea sounded ominous. How could I  possibly stand up 
before a room full of law enforcement  officers who knew full well 
that I had been convicted  of, and did prison time for, the serious 
crime of  racketeering," he said.

Rijock did, and has never looked back. Now he travels  the world and 
is a prolific writer on money laundering  techniques, focusing 
especially on emerging threats and  new methods.

Did Rijock every launder money through Cyprus? The  answer was 'no'.

"But I knew people in the old days who were going to  Cyprus that's 
what they were doing," he said.

"The old preconceived notion that people would go to  Cyprus and 
launder their money, that's the old  days...that's 20 years in the 
past. Now Cyprus is part of  the EU. It's on the same level as the 
rest of Europe."
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