John Madinger

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I joined the drug war in 1974 as a sheriff’s deputy, then served as a narcotics agent, supervisor, and administrator and a special agent/criminal investigator with the U.S. Department of the Treasury before hitting mandatory retirement age in 2010. I spent fifteen years of that time in undercover assignments from Florida to Honolulu and worked major fraud and money laundering cases, becoming one of the country’s leading authorities on money laundering and the author of a textbook, Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators (3rd Edition), which is used in universities, by the Departments of Justice and Treasury, and foreign governments around the world. I hold a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Indiana University and a master’s degree in history from the University of Hawaii and graduated from the Oklahoma state police academy, the Drug Enforcement Administration's National Academy, and was the honor graduate in the Treasury Criminal Investigation Training Program. I received numerous awards and citations from the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program and was certified to testify in federal court as an expert witness on money laundering. As part of my job, I developed and taught classes on money laundering and financial crime in the United States, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, working overseas in over twenty countries. On the literary front, I also wrote another textbook, Confidential Informant: Law Enforcement's Most Valuable Tool, and a history of the opium trade, Opium Kings of Old Hawaii, as well as two novels, Death on Diamond Head and Pipe Dreams, and a memoir, Going Under: Kidnapping, Murder, and a Life Undercover, for WildBlue Press, a finalist for Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award. I’ve also received awards for fiction, non-fiction, short stories, academic writing, and even poetry. I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I spent all but three years of my career, and currently live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with my wife and a Portuguese Water Dog named Indy.