Iran Sleeper Cells Parked Around the U.S.

Posted on August 21, 2018August 21, 2018 by Denise Simon

Primer: Two Individuals Charged for Acting as Illegal Agents of the Government of Iran

Could it be that law enforcement officials are working the cases diligently? This adds a deeper dimension to the work of the FBI, ICE and Border Patrol as well as all diplomatic posts in Central America and Latin America. Iran’s economy is in a free-fall, so money/revenue is most important and illicit activities, including attacks are the easiest method to raise operational funds.

Israel and Stuff » Report: Obama WH obstructed Hezbollah ...

Iranian-backed militants are operating across the United States mostly unfettered, raising concerns in Congress and among regional experts that these “sleeper cell” agents are poised to launch a large-scale attack on the American homeland, according to testimony before lawmakers.

Iranian agents tied to the terror group Hezbollah have already been discovered in the United States plotting attacks, giving rise to fears that Tehran could order a strike inside America should tensions between the Trump administration and Islamic Republic reach a boiling point.

Intelligence officials and former White House officials confirmed to Congress on Tuesday that such an attack is not only plausible, but relatively easy for Iran to carry out at a time when the Trump administration is considering abandoning the landmark nuclear deal and reapplying sanctions on Tehran.

There is mounting evidence that Iran poses “a direct threat to the homeland,” according to Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and chair of its subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence.

A chief concern is “Iranian support for Hezbollah, which is active in the Middle East, Latin America, and here in the U.S., where Hezbollah operatives have been arrested for activities conducted in our own country,” King said, referring the recent arrest of two individuals plotting terror attacks in New York City and Michigan.

“Both individuals received significant weapons training from Hezbollah,” King said. “It is clear Hezbollah has the will and capability.”

After more than a decade of receiving intelligence briefs, King said he has concluded that “Hezbollah is probably the most experienced and professional terrorist organization in the world,” even more so than ISIS and Al Qaeda.

Asked if Iran could use Hezbollah to conduct strikes on the United States, a panel of experts including intelligence officials and former White House insiders responded in the affirmative.

“They are as good or better at explosive devices than ISIS, they are better at assassinations and developing assassination cells,” said Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer who worked to counter Iranian influence in the region. “They’re better at targeting, better at looking at things,” and they can outsource attacks to Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah is smart,” Pregent said. “They’re very good at keeping their communications secure, keeping their operational security secure, and, again, from a high profile attack perspective, they’d be good at improvised explosive devices.”

Others testifying before Congress agreed with this assessment.

“The answer is absolutely. We do face a threat,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who has long tracked Iran’s militant efforts. “Their networks are present in the Untied States.”

Iran is believed to have an auxiliary fighting force or around 200,000 militants spread across the Middle East, according to Nader Uskowi, a onetime policy adviser to U.S. Central Command and current visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

At least 50 to 60 thousand of these militants are “battle tested” in Syria and elsewhere.

“It doesn’t take many of them to penetrate this country and be a major threat,” Uskowi said. “They can pose a major threat to our homeland.”

While Iran is currently more motivated to use its proxies such as Hezbollah regionally for attacks against Israel or U.S. forces, “those sleeper cells” positioned in the United States could be used to orchestrate an attack, according to Brian Katulis, a former member of the White House National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.

“The potential is there, but the movement’s center of focus is in the region,” said Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Among the most pressing threats to the U.S. homeland is Hezbollah’s deep penetration throughout Latin America, where it finances its terror activities by teaming up with drug cartels and crime syndicates.

“Iran’s proxy terror networks in Latin America are run by Tehran’s wholly owned Lebanese franchise Hezbollah,” according to Ottolenghi. “These networks are equal part crime and terror” and have the ability to provide funding and logistics to militant fighters.

“Their presence in Latin America must be viewed as a forward operating base against America’s interest in the region and the homeland itself,” he said.

These Hezbollah operatives exploit loopholes in the U.S. immigration system to enter America under the guise of legitimate business.

Operatives working for Hezbollah and Iran use the United States “as a staging ground for trade-based and real estate-based money laundering.” They “come in through the front door with a legitimate passport and a credible business cover story,” Ottolenghi said.

The matter is further complicated by Iran’s presence in Syria, where it has established not only operating bases, but also weapons factories that have fueled Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s war on Israel.

Iran’s development of advanced ballistic missile and rocket technology—which has continued virtually unimpeded since the nuclear deal was enacted—has benefitted terror groups such as Hezbollah.

“Iran is increasing Hezbollah’s capability to target Israel with more advanced and precision guided rockets and missiles,” according to Pregent. “These missiles are being developed in Syria under the protection of Syrian and Russian air defense networks.”

In Iraq, Iranian forces “have access to U.S. funds and equipment in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Iraq’s Ministry of Interior,” Pregent said.

The Trump administration has offered tough talk on Iran, but failed to take adequate action to dismantle its terror networks across the Middle East, as well as in Latin American and the United States itself, according to CAP’s Katulis.

“The Trump administration has talked a good game and has had strong rhetoric, but I would categorize its approach vis-à-vis Iran as one of passive appeasement,” said Katulis. “We simply have not shown up in a meaningful way.”

30,000 ISIS Fighters is Not Defeat

Posted on August 14, 2018August 14, 2018 by Denise Simon

Army Col. Sean Ryan, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, spoke to Pentagon reporters about progress being made against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He spoke via satellite from Baghdad.

photo

“In Iraq, operations continue to secure areas across the country, as Iraq security forces locate, identify and destroying ISIS remnants,” Ryan said. “Last week alone, … operations across Iraq have resulted in the arrest of more than 50 suspected terrorists and the removal of 500 pounds of improvised explosive devices.”

Progress in Iraq’s Anbar Province

Iraqi forces are moving in Anbar province, in the Hamrin Mountains and Samarra. Reconstruction efforts are ongoing with roads reopening in the north. Iraqi engineers “cleaned the main road between Salahuddin and Samarra of IEDs, making travel safer between the two cities,” he said.

In the Baghdad area, the ISF established central service coordination cells, a program designed to use military resources to enable local communities to restore basic infrastructure and services. “Initial efforts by the coordination cells include trash collection, road openings, maintenance of water facilities,” Ryan said.

Syrian Democratic Forces are preparing for the final assault on ISIS in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. The SDF is reinforcing checkpoints and refining blocking positions ahead of clearance operations in Hajin, Ryan said.

Military Operations, Reconstruction in Syria

In Syria, too, reconstruction efforts go hand in hand with military operations. “In Raqqa, the internal security forces have destroyed more than 30 caches containing 500 pounds of explosives discovered during the clearance operations in the past weeks,” the colonel said.

ISIS remains a concern in both countries, the colonel said. “Make no mistake: The coalition is not talking victory or taking our foot off the gas in working with our partners,” he said.

Defeating ISIS, he said, will require a long-term effort.

“We cannot emphasize enough that the threat of losing the gains we have made is real, especially if we are not able to give the people a viable alternative to the ISIS problem,” Ryan said. “We continue to call on the international community to step up and ensure that conditions that gave rise to ISIS no longer exist in both Syria and Iraq.”

***

(UNITED NATIONS) — The Islamic State extremist group has up to 30,000 members roughly equally distributed between Syria and Iraq and its global network poses a rising threat — as does al-Qaeda, which is much stronger in places, a United Nations report says.

The report by U.N. experts circulated Monday said that despite the defeat of IS in Iraq and most of Syria, it is likely that a reduced “covert version” of the militant group’s “core” will survive in both countries, with significant affiliated supporters in Afghanistan, Libya, Southeast Asia and West Africa.

The experts said al-Qaeda’s global network also “continues to show resilience,” with its affiliates and allies much stronger than IS in some spots, including Somalia, Yemen, South Asia and Africa’s Sahel region.

Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Iran “have grown more prominent” and have been working with the extremist group’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, “projecting his authority more effectively than he could previously” including on events in Syria, the experts said.

The report to the Security Council by experts monitoring sanctions against IS and al-Qaeda said the estimate of the current total IS membership in Iraq and Syria came from governments it did not identify. The estimate of between 20,000 and 30,000 members includes “a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,” it said.

While many IS fighters, planners and commanders have been killed in fighting, and many other fighters and supporters have left the immediate conflict zone, the experts said many still remain in the two countries — some engaged militarily “and others hiding out in sympathetic communities and urban areas.”

IS fighters swept into Iraq in the summer of 2014, taking control of nearly a third of the country. At the height of the group’s power its self-proclaimed caliphate stretched from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to just north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

With its physical caliphate largely destroyed, the Islamic State movement is transforming from a “proto-state” to a covert “terrorist” network, “a process that is most advanced in Iraq” because it still controls pockets in Syria, the report said.

The experts said the discipline imposed by IS remains intact and IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “remains in authority” despite reports that he was injured.

“It is just more delegated than before, by necessity, to the wider network outside the conflict zone,” the experts said.

The flow of foreign fighters to IS in Syria and Iraq has come to a halt, they said, but “the reverse flow, although slower than expected, remains a serious challenge.”

While the rate of terrorist attacks has fallen in Europe, the experts said some governments “assess that the underlying drivers of terrorism are all present and perhaps more acute than ever before.” This suggests that any reduction in attacks is likely to be temporary until IS recovers and reorganizes and al-Qaeda “increases its international terrorist activity or other organizations emerge in the terrorist arena,” they said.

The experts looked at the threats posed by IS and al-Qaeda by region:

—ARABIAN PENINSULA: Al-Qaida’s leaders recognize Yemen “as a venue for guerrilla-style attacks and a hub for regional operations.” Yemen’s lack of a strong central government “has provided a fertile environment for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” Its strength inside Yemen is estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000, compared with only 250 to 500 IS members in the conflict-wracked country.

—NORTH AFRICA: Despite the loss to IS of the Libyan city of Sirte and continued airstrikes, the extremist group “still has the capacity to launch significant attacks within Libya and across the border, reverting to asymmetric tactics and improvised explosive devises.” Estimates of IS members vary between 3,000 and 4,000, dispersed across Libya. Up to 1,000 fighters in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula have pledged allegiance to IS leader al-Baghdadi. Al-Qaeda is also continuing a resurgence in Libya.

—WEST AFRICA: An al-Qaeda-affiliated coalition has increased attacks on French, U.S., U.N. and other international interests in the Sahel. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has urged attacks on French private companies. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is active mostly at the Mali-Niger border and has less of a footprint. “Member states assess that terrorists are taking advantage of territorial control and ethnic conflicts to radicalize populations.”

—EAST AFRICA: The al-Shabab extremist group in Somalia, an al-Qaeda affiliate, “remains the dominant terrorist group” in that country, with improvised explosive devices “its weapon of choice.” Despite sustained military action against al-Shabab, “the group has enhanced its capabilities as it retains its influence and appeal.” Member states said IS in Somalia “is fragile and operationally weak,” but “it still presents a threat” because the country remains a focus for possible future operations.

—EUROPE: During the first six months of 2018, “the threat in Europe remained high” but “the tempo of attacks and disrupted plots was lower than during the same period in 2017.” Much activity involved individuals with no prior security records or deemed low risk. IS used the media to urge sympathizers in Europe to conduct attacks in their home countries. Member states expressed concern that returnees could disseminate knowledge and skills related to making drones, explosive devices and car bombs.

—CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA: According to an unidentified U.N. member state, IS poses an immediate threat in the region but al-Qaida is the “intellectually stronger group” and poses a longer-term threat. Some leaders of the al-Qaida “core,” including al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, are reported to be in Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. IS continues to relocate some key operatives to Afghanistan. One unidentified government reported newly arrived IS fighters from Algeria, France, Russia, Tunisia and central Asian states.

—SOUTHEAST ASIA: Despite last year’s heavy losses in the Philippines, IS affiliates in the country “are cash rich and growing in membership.” Intermediaries facilitated financial transfers from the IS “core” to Philippines affiliates and arranged bomb-making and firearms training for recruits from Indonesia at camps in the Philippines. Attacks in Indonesia by an IS-linked network using families as suicide bombers could become “a troubling precedent.”

U.S. is on the Offensive, Espionage and Cyber

Posted on August 2, 2018August 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

In the last few weeks, there was the Aspen Security Forum, a 3 day event. Then there was a DNI report. Then came 2 separate nationwide conference calls hosted by CERT, the cyber division of DHS.

A remarkable White House press briefing included the heads of intelligence agencies explaining the condition of cyber/espionage and the countermeasures against Russia.

Then there is the military side, a division frankly not well known, the Defense Security Services.

See the whole 2 page release here.

And there is more:

FBI Releases Article on Securing the Internet of Things

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released an article on the risks associated with internet-connected devices, commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). FBI warns that cyber threat actors can use unsecured IoT devices as proxies to anonymously pursue malicious cyber activities.

As our reliance on IoT becomes an important part of everyday life, being aware of the associated risks is a key part of keeping your information and devices secure. NCCIC encourages users and administrators to review the FBI article for more information and refer to the NCCIC Tip Securing the Internet of Things.

*** IOT?

The internet of things, at its simplest level, is a network of smart devices – from refrigerators that warn you when you’re out of milk to industrial sensors – that are connected to the internet so they can share data, but IoT is far from a simple challenge for IT departments.

Related reading: Five IoT Predictions For 2019

For many companies, it represents a vast influx of new devices, many of which are difficult to secure and manage. It’s comparable to the advent of BYOD, except the new gizmos are potentially more difficult to secure, aren’t all running one of three or four basic operating systems, and there are already more of them.

A lot more, in fact – IDC research says that there are around 13 billion connected devices in use worldwide already, and that that number could expand to 30 billion within the next three years. (There were less than 4 billion smartphone subscriptions active around the world in Ericsson’s most recent Mobility Report.)

With a huge number of companies “doing IoT” – most big-name tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Intel, and IBM have various types of IoT play – all working to bring as many users as possible into their respective ecosystems, motivation to make sure IoT systems and devices from different companies all work with each other is sometimes lacking.

photo

The problem, of course, is that nobody’s willing to give up on the idea of their own ecosystem becoming a widely accepted standard – think of the benefits to the company whose system wins out! – and so the biggest players in the space focus on their own systems and development of more open technologies lags behind. More here.

Night Wolves, Putin’s Hells Angels

Posted on August 2, 2018August 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

The Slovak foreign ministry says it is “disturbing” that the Night Wolves – a Russian nationalist biker gang close to President Vladimir Putin – now have a base in Slovakia.

The base has old military vehicles and lies in Dolna Krupa, a village 70km (44 miles) from the capital Bratislava.

The Russian government calls it the Night Wolves’ “European headquarters”.

The bikers are under US sanctions, accused of providing military help for the pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine.

story/photo

So close in fact, Putin rode with them and endorses the group.

Earlier this year, the Night Wolves did a 9 day tour. Bosnia? Yes. Members of the Night Wolves motorcycle gang visiting a monastery in Serbia. The gang’s tour, funded with a grant from the Kremlin, was billed as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region.CreditLaura Boushnak for The New York Times

Heck, the rode through the Balkins.

The Night Wolves billed their tour, funded with a $41,000 grant from the Kremlin, as a “pilgrimage” meant to showcase the shared Orthodox faith of Russia and the region, at least the bits of it inhabited by ethnic Serbs like Republika Srpska, which is legally part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

***

Performances organized by the Russian hyper-patriotic biker club Night Wolves stand as prime examples of the Kremlin’s new take on old propaganda efforts. Their spectacles tend to display the full gamut of the Kremlin’s imagery and messaging, from the evil of the United States and Ukrainians to the glorification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian military.

An analysis of Night Wolves spectacles reveals how the Kremlin’s agent provocateurs make use of the fuzzy lines between patriotism, pro-Putinism, Russian Orthodoxy, civic/national duty, and militarism. The purposes of these anti-American scripts are many, not least of which is to garner psychological and physical support for the motherland one way or the other, especially during the Euromaidan era, but also to create a sense of Russian identity, which has been vacuous since the early 1990s. The alarming aspect is that these types of fantastical attractions can transform patriotic attendees into actual networks of gun-toting Russian combatants, which may be part of the government’s objective. Read more here, chilling operation concocted by the Kremlin.

Rock videos supporting the Night Wolves? Yes, glad you asked.

Did they have some role in Crimea and Ukraine? Yup. In 2014:

As night fell on Friday , there were signs that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was slipping beyond Kiev’s reach. The parliament remained under siege by pro-Russian protesters, armed men of unknown allegiance were guarding the airports and the Night Wolves, a biker gang with close ties to the Kremlin, blockaded the roads.

Three hundred men in military uniforms with no identifying insignia had entered the Sevastopol airport compound on Thursday night, witnesses said, in what Ukraine’s new interior minister, Arsen Avakov, described as a “military invasion and occupation”.

***

In 2014, the U.S. Treasury added the Night Wolves to the sanctions list due to Crimea and in violation of the Minsk Agreement.

The Night Wolves biker group had its members serve in the Crimean self-defense forces as early as February 2014, which supported local Crimeans against the Government of Ukraine. In March 2014, the Night Wolves conducted intimidation and criminal activities within Ukraine and also abducted and subsequently assaulted a Ukrainian Border Guard official. This biker group also participated in the storming of the gas distribution station in Strikolkove and the storming of the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters in Sevastopol. In early-April 2014, the Night Wolves helped smuggle a former senior Ukrainian official out of Ukraine and also helped obtain Russian passports for another larger group of senior Ukrainian officials that they helped get into Russia. The Night Wolves have been closely connected to the Russian special services, have helped to recruit separatist fighters for Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine, and were deployed to the cities of Luhansk and Kharkiv. The Night Wolves group is being designated because it is an entity that is responsible for or complicit in, or has engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Aleksandr Zaldostanov, also known as “the Surgeon,” is the leader of the Night Wolves. Zaldostanov chairs the overall Night Wolves organization, and some of his responsibilities include the punishing of chapter groups and members for disloyalty to the Night Wolves organization. During the late-March storming of the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters in Sevastopol, he coordinated the confiscation of Ukrainian weapons with the Russian forces. Zaldostanov is being designated for being a leader of a group, the Night Wolves, that is engaging in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Legislation Proposed on Front Co.’s/Foreign Investment

Posted on July 31, 2018July 31, 2018 by Denise Simon

Frankly, Britain has a much worse issue, but big hat tip to Senator Rubio. There are cities in America which are pockets of some nasty dark money in real estate.

There needs to be some real reform to CFIUS, Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States.

Crackdown on dirty money shook Miami real estate. Now, Rubio wants to take it national

Washington– In a move with significant implications for the U.S. housing market, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is seeking to take a Treasury Department crackdown on dirty money in luxury real estate and expand it from a few high-priced enclaves to the entire nation.

Rubio says his proposal is an attempt to root out criminals who use illicit funds and anonymous shell companies to buy homes — a form of money laundering that hides the cash’s tainted origin from law enforcement and banks. The widespread practice enables terrorism, sex trafficking, corruption, and drug dealing by providing an outlet for dirty cash, according to transparency advocates.

Through an amendment to an unrelated major spending bill, Rubio will ask Treasury to study whether government regulators should force shell companies that buy homes priced at $300,000 or more in cash nationwide to disclose their owners. That could be a figure as high as 10 percent of the nation’s real-estate deals.

A similar reporting requirement affecting transactions priced at $1 million or more has already had a chilling effect on all-cash corporate sales in Miami-Dade County, which has been under Treasury’s microscope since 2016.

“Shell companies involved in shady activities are a big problem, especially throughout South Florida,” Rubio said in a statement to McClatchy and the Miami Herald. “With this provision, a study would be conducted to look at requiring all shell companies that make cash transactions, regardless of their area, to disclose their identities.”

The amendment builds on a previous Treasury disclosure order that applied only to certain markets, including South Florida.

That order — which forced shell companies buying homes with cash to reveal their true owners to the government — has been in place in some areas since March 2016 at various price points. Its effects were immediate and stunning. As soon as the order took hold, shell companies buying homes with cash dropped off the map, a recent study by academic economists found. In Miami-Dade, the number of corporate cash sales plummeted 95 percent, although a strong overall market suggests creative buyers found ways to circumvent the rules, researchers said.

Before the crackdown, corporate cash sales accounted for roughly a third of home-sale volume in Miami-Dade, which is popular with foreign investors.

The amendment has the support of the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, as well as Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Both have tried to widen disclosure of true owners of shell companies, which can be listed in the names of lawyers, accountants, and other fronts. The lack of corporate transparency frustrates law-enforcement officials, who say it stymies their investigations.

A vote is expected on the overall bill as soon as this week, Rubio’s office said.

The powerful real-estate industry has fought attempts from the government to have it act as a watchdog against money laundering, as banks, precious-metals dealers, money-service businesses, and other financial institutions are required to do. Many Realtors and developers say their clients are simply wealthy buyers seeking privacy, not criminals.

But over the past two years, Treasury has moved with force into what had been a largely unregulated sector of the U.S. financial system. Starting in Miami-Dade County and Manhattan two years ago, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) began requiring anonymous shell companies to disclose their true owners when they bought pricey homes with cash.

The temporary directives — called “geographic targeting orders” or GTOs — were later expanded to other housing markets in Florida, New York, Texas, California, and Hawaii where foreign and anonymous investors are gobbling up real estate and driving up prices. The rules require title agents to identify the owners of shell companies buying homes with cash and disclose their names to the federal government.

“The GTOs are working, and it’s time they were expanded. Laundering money through real estate isn’t new, but [what is new is] an effective approach to combat dirty money,” said Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, a watchdog nonprofit.

Rubio’s proposal to take the project national, Gascoigne added, “sends a strong message that we’re serious about protecting the U.S. financial system, the real-estate market, and communities across the country.”

Stephen Hudak, a spokesman for FinCEN, declined to comment.

Cracking down

The Rubio amendment asks Treasury to consider expanding the FinCEN directive to include all cash real-estate transactions over $300,000 anywhere in the United States.

It would give Treasury 180 days to submit a study to Congress providing details about the data that has been collected by FinCEN since 2016 and how it is being used. The agency is also being asked to determine if it needs more authority to combat money laundering and whether expanding the targeting order would be of use. In addition, FinCEN is asked if a registry of company owners — something supported by a bipartisan cast of federal legislators — would help authorities fight money laundering, tax evasion, election fraud, and other illegal activities.

Read More

Rubio Whitehouse Wyden FinCEN GTO amendment.pdf

Previously, the FinCEN disclosure requirement kicked in for corporate cash sales that were priced at $3 million or higher in New York City, $1 million or higher in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, and at different price points in other states. In May, FinCEN enacted a new directive that secretly lowered the number to $300,000 in all GTO areas. Sources familiar with the agency’s thinking say the new order was kept confidential because regulators don’t want to give money launderers a road map for structuring their transactions to avoid reporting.

Rubio’s amendment would start at that lower price point, covering a major chunk of home sales nationwide. Last year, the median U.S. home sold for a price of $247,200, according to the National Association of Realtors.

A cash transaction is one in which there is no mortgage and the property is purchased outright. Cash doesn’t just mean stacks of greenbacks; it also includes such financial instruments as wire transfers, checks, and money orders. Unlike mortgages, cash deals don’t involve heavy scrutiny from banks, which can identify potential money laundering and file suspicious-activity reports to the feds.

The 2016 publication of the Panama Papers spotlighted how anonymous shell companies in faraway tax havens were used to camouflage property purchases in the United States by politicians, drug traffickers, and financial fraudsters. Housing analysts argue that the flow of anonymous money is driving up prices.

“There’s hardly a metropolitan area in the country that is not experiencing a real public-policy issue regarding affordable housing,” said Ned Murray, a housing expert and associate director of Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center. “The whole focus of the real-estate industry is on … supplying homes for wealthy investors that we don’t know much about. It really is a factor for prices and supply.”

Much of the world has responded to the threat of corruption in real estate by requiring greater ownership disclosure. The United States has done relatively less, although Rubio’s amendment could help close the gap.

Those operating in the shadows of the real-estate market certainly seem aware of the Treasury disclosure requirements — and are working to get around them.

Take Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, who is the former legal counsel to the Venezuelan Ministry of Oil and Mining. He was recently among those charged in a federal $1.2 billion money-laundering case involving funds stolen from Venezuela’s state oil company.

When Urdaneta prepared to close on a brand-new, $5.3 million condo at the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, he was informed by paperwork from the developer that “taking title [to the unit] under a company or trust may trigger FinCEN reporting requirements,” according to a federal indictment filed last week. He was worried enough about the disclosure that he discussed how to avoid it with a government informant.

Ultimately, Urdaneta set up a company in his wife’s name to do the deal, prosecutors allege.

Developer Gil Dezer’s company built the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, where units sell for millions of dollars to wealthy out-of-towners.

David Santiago [email protected]

Dezer Development did not say why it alerts potential buyers that they might end up on Treasury’s radar.

“All language relating to legal requirements associated with closings was prepared by Dezer Development’s outside legal counsel,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email to the Herald on Monday.

The 60-story Porsche Design Tower is famous for a car elevator that allows owners to park in “sky garages” within their units. On Friday, federal prosecutors indicated that they would move to seize the unit.

Bad for brokers?

While overall home sales held steady even after the FinCEN rule went into place, the real-estate study found, luxury home prices were slightly softer in markets affected by the GTO.

That suggests that expanding the GTO could have a dampening effect on the nation’s real-estate market, said Jeff Morr, a luxury real-estate broker at Douglas Elliman and chairman of the Miami Master Brokers Forum, an industry group.

“Does it stop money laundering? Probably, yes,” Morr said. “Is it good for the real-estate market? Probably, no.”

But at least making the rule nationwide might take some of the heat off Miami, he said.

“It may make Florida less unattractive now that it’s everywhere,” Morr said. “We shouldn’t be treated differently than other areas.”

The crane has become the unofficial city bird of Miami during the latest construction boom.

Miami Herald

That was exactly the sentiment of the Miami-Dade County Commission when the rule was first enacted in 2016. At the time, commissioners passed a symbolic resolution asking regulators to stop singling out Miami for special scrutiny. The industry still feels the same way.

Legitimate buyers need privacy, too, said Ron Shuffield, president and CEO of EWM Realty International.

“There are wealthy people who don’t want everyone to know that they live at the end of the block,” Shuffield said. “If someone is determined to launder money, they can pick anywhere in the country to do it, from the smallest city in the Midwest to Miami or New York City. It’s only fair that every area have to report. Otherwise, the rules could be scaring people away from certain markets.”