how a smurf works
smurfing takes place in three stages placement layering and integration in the placement stage the criminal is relieved of guarding large amounts of illegally obtained cash by placing it into the financial system for example a smurf may pack cash in a suitcase and smuggle it to another country for gambling buying international currency or other reasons during the layering stage illicit money is separated from its source by a sophisticated layering of financial transactions that obscures the audit trail and breaks the link to the original crime for example a smurf may move funds electronically from one country to another then divide the money into investments placed in advanced financial options or overseas markets the integration stage is when the money is returned to the criminal although there are numerous ways of getting the money back funds must appear to come from a legitimate source and the process must not draw attention for example valuables such as property artwork jewelry or high end automobiles may be purchased and given to the criminal example of smurfingone way criminals move money internationally is known as cuckoo smurfing suppose that a new york criminal owes a london criminal 9 000 and a london merchant owes a new york supplier 9 000 the london merchant and the new york supplier do not know the funds were never directly transferred all they know is that the london merchant paid 9 000 and the new york supplier received 9 000 however if caught the london banker could face serious consequences another common method is structuring transactions with a group of accomplices each with their own bank accounts for example a person might have 50 000 to send abroad which would ordinarily trigger a currency transaction report and call attention to the source of their income in order to avoid a ctr that person could have ten accomplices make bank transfers of 5 000 each even if the money is legally sourced the act of dividing the transaction to avoid being reported is itself a crime there is no general law against handling large sums of money however the act of structuring transactions to evade federal reporting limits is a serious crime even if the money is legally sourced smurf faqsthe name smurf appears to be borrowed from illicit methamphetamine manufacturers in order to accumulate regulated precursor chemicals drug manufacturers will often send accomplices to make multiple purchases at multiple locations without exceeding the legal purchasing limits in finance smurfing refers to the practice of avoiding regulatory scrutiny by dividing a large sum of money into multiple smaller transactions sometimes divided into multiple different accounts smurfing is a form of money laundering which may allow criminal groups to move illegally acquired money into the regulated financial system unrelated to financial smurfing in cybersecurity smurfing refers to a distributed denial of service attack in which multiple servers are tricked into communicating with the target all at once although each contact is small the cumulative effect is to make the target s network unusable 