Cartels, Triads, and Trade-Based Money Laundering—From Pemex to Vancouver Casinos

In this episode of The Bureau Podcast, investigative journalist Sam Cooper sits down with Chris Meyer of WideFountain to trace the stunning global patterns of cartel, Triad, and Chinese Communist Party–linked networks penetrating legitimate trade structures to launder narcotics proceeds and move fentanyl and meth invisibly around the world.

Together, they examine how cartels and Chinese Triads exploit commodities, corporate shells, and international trade routes—controlling entire sectors like oil, seafood, and luxury goods—as part of a new hybrid criminal statecraft that links Mexico, Canada, China, and beyond.

Key Themes in This Episode

• Cartel Oil Corruption in Mexico
  We break down a new U.S. indictment from Houston, charging Mexican nationals with bribing officials at Pemex. Documents suggest the scheme is one piece of a vast conspiracy in which cartels steal and smuggle crude oil across the U.S. border, refine it, and sell it globally—while laundering fentanyl and meth profits through the same pipelines of trade.

• Casino Intel: Triads & Cartels in Vancouver
  A classified Canadian source revealed explosive evidence seized from an underground Richmond mansion casino, where a Triad operative’s phone exposed over a thousand messages with Mexican cartel counterparts. Beyond drug logistics, the communications showed how these groups use commodities—everything from avocados and limes to geoduck clams and lobsters—to wash dirty money through trade-based laundering.

• Historic Parallels: The Lai Changxing Smuggling Empire
  Cooper and Meyer revisit the case that first brought them together—Lai Changxing’s notorious Xiamen-based smuggling syndicate. At its core, Meyer argues, Lai’s contraband empire was not just about oil, narcotics, and luxury goods, but a covert PRC military intelligence operation. The parallels to today’s cartel-Triad partnerships are striking.

Why It Matters

• Trade-based money laundering (TBML) has become the central node where narcotics, corruption, and geopolitics converge.

• The same methods that once fueled Lai Changxing’s empire now enable Mexican cartels and Triads to move fentanyl proceeds at scale, under the radar of Western regulators.

• With governments often paralyzed or complicit, these networks function as a “shadow state” embedded in legitimate economies—from Vancouver real estate and casinos, to Mexican energy, to global shipping routes.