My understanding -- admittedly grokked from watching The Wire -- is that criminals usually have lawyers on retainer, and they pay said lawyers before their asse

My understanding -- admittedly grokked from watching The Wire -- is that criminals usually have lawyers on retainer, and they pay said lawyers before their assets are seized, which in any case makes a lot more sense. There is also the case of the Antiguan bank account under a fake name that the lawyer and defendant know about. The Dread Pirate Roberts seems to have thought he was invincible and did not take such precautions, of course. Another poster suggests "spending enormous amounts of money on prosecutions" to counter drug funds. This is problematic because the drug trade is massive, with the market for cocaine alone estimated at >$100B/yr; estimates indicate that the illegal drug market could account for as much as 1% of all global economic activity. For comparison the NSA's budget is about $70B/yr and the DEA is more like $25B/yr.