How Tren de Aragua’s Expansion Sparked Financial Evolution

A Tren de Aragua money laundering scheme discovered in Chile highlights how the gang’s transnational expansion has spurred financial evolution.

Police arrested 22 individuals accused of laundering at least $4.5 million in profits from drug sales, extortion, and contract killings, the chief prosecutor of Valparaiso’s Criminal Analysis and Investigative Focus Unit (SACFI) announced on April 22.

The scheme, based in Valparaiso, Coquimbo, and Chile’s capital, Santiago, involved passing illicitly earned money to front companies before converting it into cryptocurrency, which was then sent abroad, ultimately arriving in Venezuela.

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The case follows another Tren de Aragua money laundering scheme that was last year revealed to have moved $13.5 million out of the country. It, too, used specially created bank accounts, shell companies, and cryptocurrency, a combination of methods the case’s lead investigator said at the time he had never seen before. Prosecutors in Peru reported another similar case in September 2025, where Tren de Aragua members sent laundered money to Venezuela and Colombia to make it more difficult to trace before bringing it back to Peru via front companies.

How Tren de Aragua’s Money Laundering Methods Have Improved

Tren de Aragua’s geographic expansion and diverse criminal portfolio made money laundering a necessity. And the group has continued to refine its methods, even as the laundering needs of its many factions have changed.

The transnational group of Venezuelan origin first expanded across the region by exploiting the exodus of Venezuelans fleeing repression, insecurity, and economic collapse in their home country at the end of the 2010s. Gang cells extorted migrants and people smugglers, set up their own migrant smuggling infrastructure, and used their control over migration routes to traffic girls and women into sexual exploitation. 

Once they arrived in countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Chile, Tren de Aragua cells began engaging in low-barrier-to-entry crimes such as extortion and retail drug sales. Although they have not developed a significant role in the most profitable criminal economies, such as transnational drug trafficking or illegal mining, the factions’ diverse criminal portfolios spread across a broad geographical area generate so much income that they require complex laundering methods to evade detection.

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Originally, Tren de Aragua factions abroad were required to send portions of their profits to the organization’s leadership, which was based in Tocorón prison in Venezuela. The Venezuelan government’s takeover of Tocorón in September 2023 scattered the central leadership, rupturing its connections with at least some of its cells abroad. But investigations in Chile revealed how factions continue to coordinate on money laundering.

Some of the original methods used to send money to Tren de Aragua’s leaders were relatively basic, including using transfer services like Western Union. But they abandoned this method as it attracted too much attention, a Peruvian police officer told the local press in 2023. Instead, gang factions developed strategies involving passing small quantities of money through multiple bank accounts to disguise its origin or using front companies, especially cash-heavy businesses, like nail salons or nightlife event companies.

Cryptocurrency, which Tren de Aragua has been using since at least 2022, according to Chilean prosecutors, is now central to its money laundering operations. The most complex schemes the gang employs involve using a blend of crypto and other methods, such as passing small amounts of money through multiple bank accounts, front companies, and international transfers, to make trails more difficult to follow.

The evolution of methods has coincided with an evolution in the gang’s structure, with some factions setting up specialist cells focused solely on money laundering.