Heat (1995)
Botched Armored Car Robbery Nets a Money Launderers Bearer Bonds
Heat, the 170-minute Michael Mann crime drama, features some of the most memorable action sequences in film, a heavy, but methodical opening scene of an armored truck heist gone awry and a chaotic bank robbery shoot-out in downtown Los Angeles, CA. The film maintains multiple storylines, the primary one of cop versus robber with Vincent Hannah (Al Pacino), as the obsessive LAPD Detective, and Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro), the career criminal taking down scores.
However, an often-overlooked storyline arises out of the opening sequence, where Neil and his crew rob an armored truck that contains cash and bearer bonds, only to leave the cash and take specific bundles of bearer bonds. Bearer bonds are unregistered securities with the ultimate benefit that whomever is in possession of the bonds, owns the assets in the same name, inclusive of any funds in the financial accounts. Pre-know your customer (KYC) days, proving ownership was simply providing the bearer bonds, which unlocked the money in the accounts that may have been funded by a previous owner (or two…or three). The bonds were routinely exchanged among different entities in different jurisdictions to obfuscate the true owner and source of the funds, providing attractive secrecy to illicit financiers for their clients engaged in activity such as narcotics trafficking, political corruption, tax evasion, among others.
At the 13-minute mark, Neil meets with his fence, Nate (Jon Voight), that arranges scores for him, reveals the bearer bonds from the heist are in the name of Malibu Equity & Investments, which is owned by Roger Van Zandt (William Fichtner), a money launderer for drug cartels that owns banks in the Cayman Islands. Nate goes on to tell Neil the bonds are insured and Van Zandt will make 100% of his money back, so they can flip the bonds back to Van Zandt directly, rather than sell them on the market. Neil asks Nate to look into it, while concurrently, Vincent is chasing down the heist crew, which subtly kicks off a series of cat and mouse events for the remaining 157 minutes, including Neil and Vincent having a cup of coffee along the way.
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RISK | STRATEGY | CYBER COMPLIANCE MANAGEMENT
