4. The Money Trail and the Business of Cross-Border Trade

It’s 5 a.m. on a Monday at a highway Super 8 motel near Madison, Wisconsin. Traffic is surprisingly heavy for such a sultry summer morning. Maria (an alias), a member of the Houston, Texas arm of the MS-13, works swiftly to load a U-Haul van, filling it with cardboard boxes full of OTC drugs such as Prilosec, Sudafed, and Zantac. She collected them while hitting the first of 12 Walgreens stores along her 1,200-mile route back to Houston. This early-morning ritual at a motel isn’t anything new for Maria, who does this at least four times a week. What is new are the cameras on the outside of the building—something she hadn’t noticed in the past. The slow, omniscient sway of the camera’s lens will put a crimp in her stealth mission to load up and leave the motel undetected. Staying at the Super 8 allows her to pull up behind the motel late at night instead of having to walk through the lobby with all her goods. Likewise, renting a U-Haul under an alias helps keep Maria’s mission under wraps. Why the secrecy? All the merchandise in Maria’s U-Haul is stolen. The total value of her pull from one night is about $50,000 to $60,000 retail.

Maria moves fast. On average, it takes her three and a half to four minutes to steal $2,000 worth of merchandise from a store. After working as a booster for the MS-13 for almost nine years, Maria has her technique down to a science. First, she never hits the same store twice in one month or takes the same route. However, the stores she hits can be in the same area. Second, if a store manager or sales associate asks her if she needs help, she leaves. (Personal interaction equals attention, and Maria needs to remain as under the radar as possible.) Third, if she is required to work in a group, the maximum number of people is four. Any more people might raise a red flag and puts the hit at risk. It also prevents them from getting out of the store in less than five minutes. By the end of her four-day trip, Maria’s rented van will be filled with an estimated $100,000 worth of merchandise. In a month, Maria makes this journey three times and on average picks up nearly $500,000 worth of merchandise at retail value.