FOLLOW THE MONEY

BOGOTA, Colombia - American agents are fighting drug traffickers by
following the money -- hundreds of tons of cash every year. - Drug
kingpins smuggle vast amounts of cocaine and other drugs into the
United States, where they sell it in bulk. They don't take credit
cards or checks -- only cash will do.

That amounts to a lot of greenbacks that traffickers then want to get
to Mexico and other points south.

Decades of efforts to seize drugs entering the United States and to
wipe out drug production in source countries like Colombia have not
reduced the availability of drugs on the streets of America.

So U.S. agents are now also focusing on drug traffickers' revenue.

"The drugs don't seem to dissipate the more we seize, so we're
looking at trying to cut off their lifeline to the money, because
that money is going to finance the next cycle of drugs that come into
the United States," Don Semesky, head of financial operations of the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told The Associated Press.

Traffickers smuggle $6 billion to $22 billion in cash into Mexico
from the United States each year, Semesky said in a telephone
interview from DEA headquarters near Washington.

Moving that amount of cash, destined mostly for Mexican and Colombian
drug cartels, is no easy feat.

A million dollars in $20 bills -- often the smuggled denomination --
equals 50,000 bills weighing 117 pounds. In a single stack it would
reach 16 feet, 8 inches high. One million bucks in $100 bills weighs
over 23 pounds and would reach 3 feet, four inches high.

Six billion dollars -- the minimum estimated total smuggled each year
- -- amounts to 351 tons in $20 bills. In $100 notes, $6 billion weighs 70 tons.

To transport the cash, traffickers often use the same smuggling
methods and routes that brought the drugs into the United States.

The drugs go north across the U.S.-Mexican border. The cash heads south.

U.S. drug agents have found bulk cash packed into car doors, secreted
in tires or simply buried under a load of bananas and other produce
or merchandise in trucks.

Smuggling of bulk cash along the U.S.-Mexican border "is rampant,"
said Jere Miles, a representative of the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

On Oct. 13, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
seized more than $2 million near the border in Santa Rosa, Texas, and
arrested a Texan who was allegedly carrying the cash in two suitcases
in his tractor-trailer.

And that was just small change.

"We have thousands of miles of border and there's really not any way
we're ever going to stop it unless we build a 40-foot wall or
something, and that's not going to happen," Miles said during a
money-laundering conference in the Mexican capital.

In order to focus its resources on tracking and intercepting the
cash, the DEA in July announced the launch of its Money Trail Initiative.

It is at the point where traffickers still have profits in the form
of bulk cash that they are vulnerable -- before they can launder the
money through financial institutions and in commercial transactions.

U.S. money-laundering laws are stricter than in some other countries.
For example, all financial institutions operating in the United
States are required to report transactions of $5,000 or more that
involve potential money-laundering.

So traffickers try to get the cash across the border. Once outside
the U.S., they often introduce the money into a legitimate financial
institution with looser restrictions and finally move it into U.S.
banks in seemingly innocent wire transfers, Semesky said.

The traffickers like the dollar's tradeability and America's stable
financial system, he said. "It hurts them a lot more when we seize
their money than when we seize their drugs."

So far, the Money Trail Initiative has led to the confiscation of
$36.2 million in cash from drug traffickers, said Garrison Courtney,
a DEA spokesman.

Compared to the total dollars smuggled, the confiscated amount is a
drop in the bucket -- a mere write-off for the traffickers. But the
drug agents are now turning around and using the money seized by
federal agencies to finance other law enforcement operations, the DEA said.

Associated Press writer Morgan Lee in Mexico City contributed to this report.