Like a scene from a movie, former banking executive John Cruz, author of the just released World Banking, World Fraud: Using Your Identity, has received hundreds of death threat phone calls for blowing the whistle on a organization wide money laundering operation conducted by a major banking institution. Described as Serpico of the banking industry, Cruz began collecting internal documents from his employer after discovering a complex web of fake bank accounts that were being used to launder money from all over the world.

His decision to collect documents and alert authorities cost John Cruz his job along with a slew of top executives for HSBC Banking, which is based in Great Britain. While working in Nassau County in Long Island, New York, Cruz was in charge of multiple branches and had earned his position by diligence and hard work. What he discovered during his tenure would turn his world upside down and that of many co-workers, who must have known about the malfeasance because it was blatantly obvious to John Cruz in very short order.

Still committed to the cause of shedding light on this scandal, the author of this stunning expose is preparing a lawsuit to recover whistle blower fees from the federal government. When John Cruz landed at HSBC, after working a credit union, he tripled his salary and felt he found a real place with a terrific bank that could help consumers, but instead he found a nightmare of corruption

Here is an excerpt from John Cruz's book, World Banking, World Fraud Using Your Identity that goes into the nuts and bolts of money laundering on a grand scale and how he found the fake bank accounts:



Looking deeper, I found that there were other fraudulent accounts associated with his Social Security number. My job was to follow my client's money and determine how it was allowed to flow through the bank. I discovered that the Social Security number Goldfarb used was reported as stolen. There in plain sight in plain English was a warning on his loan request that the SSN was reported stolen. Needless to say, I was floored.

I looked even deeper, or I should say farther outside the US, and discovered that accounts were being opened using the names and identities of unsuspecting people in South America and Asia. I found billions of dollars that was likely laundered money. Goldfarb himself had over $855 million going through his accounts, which were affiliated with the thousands of accounts that shared the stolen SSN around the world. My heart raced and my head spun. My continuing search came to a sudden dead end as I was locked out of the international segment of the system without warning.

That was just a minor setback. There was still plenty of research I could do. I continued looking inside the US and found accounts opened on July 10 and closed the day prior. This didn't make any sense at all. I remembered catching it before. Reviewing the account, I found millions of dollars that were transferred through the accounts just like these. Based on what I figured out from our customer information system, the date switch was being done to hide fraudulent transactions done in the name of Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public, and Sr. & Sra. Juan Q. Publico, and M. & Mme. Jean Q. Publique.

The closed accounts would be purged from the system as of the closing date, causing the transactions to disappear like ledgers written in disappearing ink. This, of course, would only work on a crappy computer system…or was the system designed to allow the money laundering? These were not interest-bearing accounts either, so the account holders were never sent interest-earning statements. The bank never had to report them to anyone; there was no interest to report to the IRS. These were sub accounts used to launder money using the public's names. Those folks might never know the accounts existed. Threading this information together, I had a better understanding of how the fraud was being perpetrated. The bank was knowingly facilitating the laundering of money using the identity of innocent people. And to top it all off a portion of the funds were put to the side to pay any fines should they get caught.

One of the three layers of a typical money-laundering scenario is to layer multiple accounts. This was layering on a grand scale, and all the accounts were taking in PayPal money at twenty-, forty-, and sixty-thousand-dollar clips to keep under the one-hundred-thousand-dollar reporting level, and then turning that money back over the same day; just as with DeFipo but on a larger scale. The money went in and out, in and out. And some of the accounts had been granted loans, which had been submitted by Anjali but rejected by the underwriter. The underwriter's job is to review the application and the loan's purpose and perform an analysis on the applicant's financials, which includes understanding the nature of the business, among many other analytical tasks. The point of all of this is to determine the level of risk that the bank would take on by approving the loan.

About John Cruz



John Cruz worked his way up the corporate banking ladder from a small Credit Union (where he should have stayed) to HSBC only to learn that sometimes telling the truth and upholding the law can ruin your life.

When Cruz began discovering money laundering, bank fraud and identity theft at HSBC his American Dream was over. World Banking World Fraud is an insider's story that exposes how an international bank launders money and covers its tracks. WBWF exposes the truth of how banks like this destroy their own employees who get too close to the truth and protect themselves from the United States government.

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