meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
The John Batchelor Show

10: Fentanyl Cash Laundering and the Role of Chinese Nationals. Josh Birenbaum (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) discusses with John Batchelor the challenge of laundering the enormous amounts of cash generated by fentanyl drug smugglers and drug lords.

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fentanyl Cash Laundering and the Role of Chinese Nationals. Josh Birenbaum (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) discusses with John Batchelor the challenge of laundering the enormous amounts of cash generated by fentanyl drug smugglers and drug lords. This multibillion-dollar process often utilizes Chinese nationals residing in the United States. Because of capital controls imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), diaspora populations use internet chat rooms and WeChat to find opportunities to access dollars. Drug cartels capitalize on this by giving the Chinese nationals money to spend lavishly, thus laundering the drug cash. While these individuals may know they are circumventing CCP controls, they usually do not know the illegal origin of the funds which ultimately finance the cartels.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Building a coffee business?

0:01.9

Serving the best Americano in town is up to you.

0:04.1

But winning back time and growing your business, leave that to sum-up. Take orders and payments anywhere with the new SumUp terminal. Turn occasional customers into regulars with a free loyalty program. And with the SumUp point-of-sale system, you'll always know when you're running low on your best-selling blends. Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more. This is John Batchel speaking to colleague Josh Barrenbaum of the Foundation for Defense

0:25.5

of Democracy about fentanyl. But the major component I learned from Josh is about the laundering

0:31.9

of the enormous amounts of dollar bill cash that comes into fentanyl drug smugglers and drug lords,

0:40.9

what to be done with the cash, asking how it's laundered

0:45.4

and the use of Chinese nationals in the United States doing it knowingly or unknowingly,

0:53.5

using the money that's given them to spend lavishly,

0:59.1

and that launders the money.

1:01.0

Oddly, the whole process seems bizarre, but it's billions and billions of dollars.

1:07.1

So here Josh is to explain it.

1:09.5

Chinese National in the country with capital

1:11.6

controls out of his own country and walking into a bank, I guess, with an enormous amount of

1:17.5

money. What is to be done? More of this tonight about fentanyl and laundering. Here's Josh.

1:26.8

Very often not. And there's different levels of awareness, I think,

1:31.1

that they understand that they are circumventing the controls set in place by the Chinese

1:37.3

Communist Party for the country of China. And they know that there is a workaround here in the U.S.

1:43.5

So you'll see advertisements on internet chat rooms and we chat will be used largely to communicate over this.

1:54.3

But these are diaspora populations of Chinese that are living in the U.S. looking for dollars,

2:00.7

and this is a service

2:02.0

that they don't know the origin of all the time, but that is providing the cash in tremendous

2:08.2

quantities that allows both them to get access to the money they need and finance the cartels

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.