Sue Smothers

Dear Elon Musk @elonmusk, Three days ago, Block, the parent of Cash App, agreed to pay roughly $764 million to the Department of Justice for failing to stop money laundering on a product that looks a lot like X Money. Regulators found Cash App’s backlog of unreviewed suspicious activity alerts went from 18,000 to 169,000 in two years. The product grew faster than the people watching it. I am writing because I believe the same thing is about to happen to you, and I would rather say so now than read about it later. My name is Everett Stern. I am the HSBC whistleblower. In 2010 I was a compliance officer who found money moving through the bank for drug cartels, terror financiers, and sanctioned regimes. I documented it. I escalated it. I was told to stop. So I took it to the United States government, the way every citizen is told to. The bank paid $1.9 billion. Nobody went to jail. And I lost everything. My career ended. I was blacklisted from the industry I had tried to protect. I slept on a cot in an apartment with cockroaches and waited tables at @PFChangs to survive. I risked my life, and for a long time I was not sure it had been worth it. I rebuilt from nothing, and I decided the rest of my life would be spent preventing the next HSBC. Last month Bank of America admitted to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act. More than $5 billion in suspicious transactions went unreported. 475 sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism programs. The bank paid $1.2 billion, about two weeks of its profit, and not one person was charged. I wrote an open letter to Secretary Bessent asking him to refer the people responsible for criminal prosecution. 3.7 million Americans read it. Republicans and Democrats stood behind it. The Secretary never answered. No banker is going to jail. Here is the problem we are facing, in plain terms. Every terrorist attack starts with a wire transfer. Every drug death in America starts with a cartel being able to move its money. The banks know it, pay their fines, and keep going. The government knows it and takes no real action. Fourteen years after HSBC, nothing has changed, and people are dying because of it. But you can change it. You can on your own platform, from the first day, before the first alert backlog ever forms. The banks will not do it. Treasury has not done it. You could be the first person with the power to build it right who actually did. I have the highest respect for you and what you have built. I know you have no interest in supporting terrorists or drug cartels. But I have spent fourteen years watching how they work, and they are already reading your website. It promises to “pay anyone on X, free and with no limits,” a Visa card with worldwide ATM fee reimbursements, no foreign transaction fees, and wires in and out. That is a feature list for an honest customer. It is also a feature list for a cartel. You have spent three years fighting bots on this platform. The day a bot can hold a wallet, the bot problem becomes a money laundering problem. Picture a fentanyl distributor in Phoenix with two hundred burner accounts, moving $900 at a time with no limits, cashed out through an X Card at an ATM anywhere in the world by Friday, with the fees reimbursed. Regulators call that structuring. Everyone else can see what it is. Your website says a great deal about yield, cashback, and FDIC coverage. It does not say one word about how X Money verifies who a customer is or watches where the money goes. Maybe that work is being done quietly. If it is, I would be glad to be wrong. If it is not, that is the gap Block just paid $764 million for. I am asking for a conversation. With you, with whoever leads financial crimes at X Money, or with anyone there who has the power to make a difference. Please allow me the honor of helping make X Money better and protecting the financial system of the United States of America. Thank you for all you do for this country. With sincere respect, Everett A. Stern HSBC Whistleblower Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit