P.M. BRIEFING : Bank Help Asked on Drug Money

NEW YORK —  U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh demanded greater help today from bankers and lawyers in uncovering money laundering by drug dealers and demolishing “the house that crack built.”

Federal authorities now are adept at discerning patterns of cash recycling by criminals, Thornburgh said, but face a “pattern of increasing sophistication” by the cocaine cartels and other organizations.

The U.S. banking and legal communities are the main line of defense against the dealers’ $100-billion annual U.S. drug revenues, he told a seminar on the drug money laundering problem.

Thornburgh told the bankers and lawyers that the annual cash intake of U.S. crack cocaine and other street drug deals, mostly represented in $20 bills or less, weighs 26 million pounds. So drug cartels’ main dilemma is, “How do you push 26 million pounds of these 20s through a bank window . . . without attracting attention?”