Quote:
Originally Posted by PRB
I knew an intel agency that was (prob is) doing the same 15 years ago.
Ever wonder how Muhammad could afford that 7/11 in the seedy part of town after just arriving in the States?
10% of all profits went to the org that set his family up...for life...Hammas, etc.
They were all fronted the cash as an investment.
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I never really thought about it in terms of illicit networks being the seed investors for small legitimate enterprises, then putting the screws on them…like Dr Evil setting up a venture capital/private equity branch of his illicit network.
I guess one of the hard parts would be to strip away and differentiate all those legitimate 1st generation immigrants building the American Dream(often outside of traditional banking arrangements by family financial pooling) from the bad guys.
Or the bad guys hiding behind otherwise innocent immigrants.
I'm guessing it's a tough one as 1st gen US immigrants(or at least just subsets of them based on ethnicity/country of origin) are off the charts, positive outliers for entrepreneurial success in the US(as per Thomas Stanley's research on wealth in the US).
They are the engine room of wealth/job creation for the US, but a few may represent a strategic threat(as opposed to just the more common localised criminal threat).