Financial Crimes OSINT Tools: Drug Trafficking
Online resources for financial investigation
This is the third in a series of articles discussing the internet tools I use as an anti-money laundering analyst. You can find the complete toolbox here, and my previous articles on tools for researching companies and banks here and here.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), annual drug sales in the US alone total $64 billion; if all US traffickers combined to form a single company, it would rank 45th on the Fortune 500, above PepsiCo, Intel, and Disney. Unlike Disney, however, traffickers need to hide the source of their wealth, and money laundering laws have always focused on combating drug trafficking. The following is a list of open internet tools for investigating and understanding drug trafficking and associated financial activity that I’ve found useful in my own investigations. I hope you’ll find them helpful as well.
Drug Slang Terms and Code Words
Drug Enforcement Agency | Link
This document, issued annually by the DEA, is very helpful for decoding drug references. Believe it or not, some drug buyers/sellers refer to the product in payment notes, and a quick command+f search of this PDF can help to identify any such references. It’s a pretty exhaustive list, and funny to boot — the street names for PCP, for example, include Busy Bee, Butt Naked, Cadillac, Cliffhanger, Columbo, Cozmos, Crazy Coke, and Crazy Eddie.
Commonly Abused Drugs Chart
National Institute on Drug Abuse | Link
This site provides profiles for commonly abused drugs that include street names as well as commercial names (if any), methods of use (e.g. snorting, injecting, etc.), physical characteristics, the applicable DEA schedules, and even health effects. Nice way to get up to speed (no pun intended) on any drug you’re dealing with.
FDA Approved Drug Products List
US Food & Drug Administration | Link
Lots of interesting and relevant data here, but the key feature is the ability to check whether or not drugs are available without a prescription. Some of the medications that are sold in informal markets (e.g. eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, etc.) or their component ingredients cannot be sold legally without a doctor’s script — this database lets you enter the drug name and check for that (see the “Marketing Status” field). It also contains copies of labels for commercial drugs, which could be helpful.
Controlled Substances List
Drug Enforcement Agency | Link
The official, comprehensive list of controlled substances in the US. Not every substance is necessarily illegal, but they all have some limits on their distribution according to the schedule under which they fall.
Drug Images Gallery
Drug Enforcement Agency | Link
Contains numerous images of each major drug type. The usefulness of these for financial investigations per se might not be obvious, but I’ve encountered situations where I identified social media accounts or websites connected to a subject that had images of illegal drugs for sale. The LSD pics are especially interesting.
State Marijuana Laws
National Conference of State Legislatures | Link
Marijuana laws are constantly changing. This is a quick resource for checking the legal status of medical and recreational cannabis by state. The page has a pretty informative map, as well as tables with relevant state-specific information (unfortunately many of the links in the tables are broken). There are many similar sites out there but this one a) belongs to an organization with more cachet than Leafy et al., and b) seems to be updated regularly.
Licensed Cannabis Businesses
State of California | Link
I’m including the California database here mostly as a reminder that legal marijuana-related businesses (MRBs) should generally be licensed in the jurisdictions in which they operate, and that those licenses (or the lack thereof) provide data that could be very useful. Since cannabis legalization in the US is state-specific, each has its own licensure requirements/databases, but a quick Google search should return official state registries as needed.
National Drug Threat Assessment
Drug Enforcement Agency | Link
Lots and lots of good information in here, including on transnational traffickers in the Americas and Asia, trafficking methods and typologies, and illicit finance. Just the photos make reading worthwhile, especially the one of hollowed-out stacks of tortillas filled with crystal meth.. seriously.
Country Illicit Drug Summaries
CIA World Factbook | Link
This page contains country profiles focused on each’s illicit drug exposure, with information on consumption, production, and transit issues. Some summaries also include illicit finance information, such as whether the country is a tax or money-laundering haven. Here is an example entry (for Albania): “active transshipment point for Southwest Asian opiates, hashish, and cannabis transiting the Balkan route and — to a lesser extent — cocaine from South America destined for Western Europe; significant source country for cannabis production; ethnic Albanian narcotrafficking organizations active and expanding in Europe; vulnerable to money laundering associated with regional trafficking in narcotics, arms, contraband, and illegal aliens.”
Narcotics Control Strategy Report
US State Department | Link
Each country in Volume I of this report has a multi-page profile with information about a) drug trafficking/use issues and b) what steps governments are taking to combat them. Volume II is more useful for our purposes — it examines trafficking from a financial crimes lens, discussing typologies/vulnerabilities and relevant AML laws and their efficacy. Check out both for background if dealing with a specific country.
International Drug Statistics
UN Office on Drugs and Crime | Link
A site with a number of interesting data points, including localized drug prices (e.g. the street price of a gram of meth in Belarus), a drug use prevalence map sortable by drug type, and a drug seizure map sortable by drug type. The latter two would be more helpful for background, but street prices could have first-order use for financial investigations.
Country Crime/Trafficking Reports
InSight Crime | Link
The South and Central American drug industries are of particular importance to US analysts, and InSight Crime is an excellent resource for keeping up on the region. Not only do they track the activities of cartels/gangs/criminal organizations, they monitor generalized security trends as well as politics, political corruption, and illicit finance. I’ve linked to a landing page with country pages, each of which has profiles of key persons and organizations operating there. Highly recommend.
Wanted Fugitives Database
Drug Enforcement Agency | Link
Most of the people on this list will most likely turn up in a Google search anyway, but it’s nice to have the site just in case. There are currently over 700 persons on the list, and each entry has a name, alias (if available), photo, charge(s), and directory-style information.
Sanctions List Search
Office of Foreign Assets Control| Link
When most people think sanctions, they think North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc. In fact, the US sanctions list includes many entities involved in drug trafficking, including a long list of individuals and companies targeted under the “Kingpin Act.” The OFAC search tool is quite easy to use, and the option exists to receive email updates for counter narcotics trafficking-related sanctions changes as well.
Organized Crime Wiki
Wikipedia | Link
This is an index of “criminal enterprises, gangs, and syndicates” grouped by geographical location and type. Frankly, there is probably a better resource out there — the links on this page are sometimes for long-defunct or insignificant groups — but I’m still on the hunt for that. If you know of any reliable database for gang info, especially with an international scope, send it my way! Meanwhile, if you know what group you’re interested in there is probably some good info here.
