Tracking the money-launderers who each year alchemize uncounted billions in ill-gotten gains into legitimate assets, proves difficult enough for the government. It's a more daunting challenge for journalists, whose knowledge of accounting procedures is often only skin deep and whose editors are loath to send them out on investigations they may produce little in the way of results.

Since the fall of 1989, however, some much-needed instruction has been available in the pages of an aggressive monthly newsletter published in Miami called Money Laundering Alert. Founded by Charles A. Intriago, a forty-nine-year-old native of Ecuador who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida and as counsel to a House sub-committee in Washington overseeing regulatory agencies, the publication guides readers through the proliferating maze of government regulations designed to frustrate laundering. It also monitors the latest scams used for hiding cash.

Begun strictly as a trade sheet for bankers and for lawyers trying to position clients just a shade to the right side of the law -- "It's worth a lot to people to keep from going to jail," says Intriago, who charges his 1,200 subscribers $ 295 a year -- the eight-page newsletter has in recent months also won a loyal following among a small group of journalists whose field of concentration lies somewhere between the police beat and the financial page. Last December, for instance, The New York Times gave prominent display to a classified report leaked to Intriago by a source at the Treasury Department that was embarrassingly critical of the Bush administration for its failure, after two years of lackluster efforts, to get only one of the twenty foreign countries targeted for money-laundering by the Treasury Department to help the United States track the export of drug dollars -- this from an administration that had vowed to be the toughest ever on drugs. Earlier, just before the invasion of Panama, Cable News Network picked up a story Intriago broke about how U.S. intelligence agencies were using sophisticated electronic monitoring devices to watch how General Manuel Noriega was providing money-laundering services to the Colombia drug cartels.

More recently, in the case of the growing scandal involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, journalistic organizations on both sides of the ocean, from the BBC to the Los Angeles Times, have been on the phone to Intriago, asking him to explain the nuances of a story he had been covering for more than a year and a half. (His first piece on the BCCI ran in February 1990.) "I think the press really missed the boat on this one," he says. "Here was an opportunity, conveniently located in one institution, to expose a whole variety of illegal contacts."

"I can't say every time I read [the newsletter] I pick up a story," says Jim Savage, the editor in charge of investigations for The Miami Herald. "But Charlie works very hard and the newsletter is an easy way to keep on top of the field."

One reason many journalists have ignored the laundering story is that the big players -- Mafia kingpins, drug lords, crooked politicians and businessmen -- often confine their operations to exotic off-shore banks. Another is that, on shore, in cities like Miami and New York, the schemes are usually a lot more difficult to recognize than, say, a holdup on the street. "The key," says Intriago, "is always to get your money into something that will give you a return on your investment without divulging the source of the money. That's the trick." A neat trick indeed, given just the weight of the stuff. Adding up only the profits generated by illegal drugs, which the most conservative government estimate puts at $ 40 billion a year -- and considering, according to Intriago, that $ 1 million packed away in stacks of $ 20 bills tips the scales at abut 113 pounds -- the bulk amount that launderers need to get rid of adds up to several tons a day.

One course -- the riskiest, considering that bulk -- is simply to ship the cash out of the country and deposit it anonymously in banks abroad. As spelled out in the Alert, however, money-laundering has increasingly worked its way into Main Street, USA. In some cases, for instance, the launderers divide their money into bundles of less than $ 10,000 -- the lowest limit on cash deposits or purchases that must be reported to the IRS -- and parcel them out to "Smurfs," named for those industrious little blue cartoon characters, who in turn deposit them in hundreds of banks throughout the country. With growing frequency, launderers have also been doing their washing through small businesses, such as real estate companies, car dealerships, jewelers, art galleries -- anywhere they can find someone willing to sell something expensive that will hold or increase its value and who will agree to take payment in cash.

Last fall, in a story that showed how alarmingly pervasive laundering had become in the U.S., Intriago wrote about a sting operation conducted by the General Accounting Office, which gave agents $ 4 million and sent them out to nine cities, offering large handfuls of cash for merchandise if the sellers would agree not to report the transaction to the government. Of the seventy-nine business approached, only three refused to break the law. "Well, I have to put a name down and a telephone number," apologized one car dealer after a peek at the $ 23,000 one agent flashed him for a restored Corvette. "But whatever name and phone number you give me is okay. You can even use Mickey Mouse."

The Alert published from twelve to fifteen stories a month, which Intriago writes himself with the help of two secretaries, a law-student intern, and a stringer in Washington. He views the sheet as less a crusade than a business venture -- it began turning a profit after three months, he says -- and tries to get stories picked up by the press as a way of advertising his usefulness to business clients.

"I'd like to build an aura about us so that when we speak, people listen, like The New England Journal of Medicine," he says.

Maybe some day. For now, most of his stories deal with topics a little too technical or trade-oriented to interest the general press. Nor does the Alert provide a real how-to manual on investigating laundering scams. But using sources cultivated from his days in Washington, Intriago often comes up with a tip about where journalists might profitably at least look for a story. A year ago, for instance, he ran a piece about federal agencies that guaranteed bank loans to farmers in the Midwest and that, during the agricultural crisis of the 1980s, became weighted down with an unwanted inventory of foreclosed acreage. To get rid of it, his sources told him, not a few country agents were suspected of selling the property to anybody with cash, cocaine kings included. As Intriago explains it, a launderer would approach an agricultural agent and propose to buy a piece of land for, say, $ 200,000 if, in return for a kickback of a few thousand, the agent would not report that the payment was made in cash. "You can rest assured," Intriago quoted his source as saying, "that there are farms out there that have been bought by people who don't fit that famous American Gothic painting."

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