Investigating a Sprawling Money Laundering Network

Times employee He explains who we are and what we do and provides intuitions behind the scenes on how our journalism meets.

For months, Selam Gebrekidan, an investigative journalist for the New York Times, set a labyrinth of diagrams, drawings and handwritten graphics on a wall inside his Hong Kong apartment. He was trying to put together exactly one of the largest money recycling networks in the world as a work.

“I needed visual help while I was cutting it into steps,” he explained. His effort was put to good use: this week, Mrs. Gebrekidan and Joy Dong, a journalist researcher who covers China for the Times, has published a complex investigation that provides an interior See how some scammers wash money and ride. For their article, Mrs. Gebrekidan and Mrs. Dong spoke with almost half a dozen scammers and their recyclators, and therefore described any phase of the recycling process.

“We wanted to make the story accessible to readers,” said Mrs. Gebrekidan of the investigation, which focuses on a single recycling network in the South -est Asia. “But first we had to understand ourselves the complexities.”

In a video call by Hong Kong, Mrs. Gebrekidan and Mrs. Dong discussed to interview the scammers and money recyclators for their article and questions still in the lead for them. These are extracted modified by the conversation.

What initially led you to pursue this story?

Hello from pregnancy I started looking for money recycling about nine months ago. Joy and I wanted to understand how the criminal underworld work.

We had received advice that the city of Sihaukville, in Cambodia, as a number of other casino hubs in that region, was a hot point for scam and money laundering, especially after pandemic. When I visited, I was hit by the number of unfinished buildings in every road. The upper floors in these empty buildings had light fluorescent lights all night. I kept thinking: who is up there? And what are they doing?

It took a while to earn people’s trust, but then, in January, we had a break. Numerous criminals have agreed to talk to us.

How did you earn people’s trust?

Joy Dong We found someone who was willing to make presentations in the local scammers community, which was incredibly useful. We shared meals with money recyclators and scammers. I have the feeling that they are quite lonely and they want to show what they are doing to strangers who will not judge them. It is as if they boast of a friend of how much money they earn and how smart they are.

Have you led most of your interviews in person?

Lacking member We had at least one meeting in person with everyone; Nobody will talk to you on the phone of these things usually. They were almost all in the restaurants. Basically we took a tour of several Chinese kitchens: Fujian from Hunan to Sichuan.

One evening after dinner, we saw a nine -minute fireworks display on the beach. It was just before the new lunar year and seemed very expensive. Later, we learned that scammers light fireworks to celebrate their greatest scammers. We were shocked because every time the fireworks go out, someone probably lost their savings on life on the other side.

How did you balance the writing of a compelling narrative with the fact that these are criminals victimizing people?

Lacking member We talked to the victims they wanted to understand: how did they move my money so quickly? Why can’t I recover it? So we started trying to answer these questions first.

Some readers wrote to us after the story came out, talking about how they lost trust in the world and the psychological crisis they lived after being targeted. Like, who can I trust? Can I even trust myself to make the right decisions? We were trying to show people that there is an entire system designed to make you feel totally defenseless.

What was your biggest challenge?

Dong After finding the Telegram channels in which anonymous users advertise money recycling services, we started trying to decode messages. Everything is in Chinese, but part of the jargon did not make sense. So we asked for some former scammers and explained us. Then we obtained a cache of a file-a-sort of manual for the recycling of money-from whistles, which had a scammering dictionary that we followed to decipher several messages.

What was your most surprising discovery?

Lacking member How brazen everything is. When you go to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, you will not believe how many SUVs you see on the street – it is often not that you see these huge American cars in Asia or anywhere in the world. Is it how, where does this money come from?

Both you plan to continue reporting on this sector. What questions do you hope to answer again?

Lacking member As we were reporting, we had views of how other parts of the recycling sector operated on how they are not reported elsewhere – and, as you can imagine, we were struggling to break through. But we want to understand how the system works. We want to show our readers that this world is very global. It is equivalent to international trade as it barely pays attention to the borders. Things are done in hours, or sometimes, second.