Attorney helps launder $52M for Sinaloa Cartel using CA companies, feds say
A Mexico City attorney accused of working for the Sinaloa Cartel pleaded guilty to helping launder $52.7 million from the U.S. through San Diego shell companies, federal prosecutors said.
As a manager of what prosecutors called an 'international money laundering organization,' Hector Alejandro Paez Garcia helped funnel millions in cash that came from the cartel's 'drug trafficking in the United States,' according to court filings.
Others involved in the organization visited 'dozens of U.S. cities to pick up' the money, which was moved through 'San Diego-based shell companies and delivered to money laundering accounts in Mexico controlled by Paez,' prosecutors said.
Now, Paez has pleaded guilty to an international money laundering conspiracy, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California said in a May 30 news release.
Paez's plea hearing occurred May 20 at the San Diego federal courthouse, records show.
His court-appointed defense attorney, Carolyn L. Oliver, didn't immediately return McClatchy News' request for comment June 2.
Paez, according to prosecutors, is one of several 'participants' charged in the Sinaloa Cartel's money laundering scheme, which was investigated by the FBI.
Labeled a foreign terrorist organization and considered 'one of the world's most powerful drug cartels' by the U.S. State Department, the cartel operates out of Sinaloa, a northwestern Mexico state bordering the Sea of Cortez.
While the FBI investigated the cartel's scheme, agents seized 66 U.S.-based bank accounts linked to the cartel's drug trafficking proceeds, according to prosecutors.
'As the FBI began to target and seize the (money laundering organization's) assets, Paez turned to the use of cryptocurrency in an attempt to shield those assets from law enforcement,' prosecutors said.
The FBI ultimately stopped the organization's cryptocurrency money laundering efforts, according to prosecutors.
'(Paez) further acknowledges that the United States can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the amount of money attributable to (Paez's) activity was about $52,725,584,' prosecutors wrote in Paez's plea agreement.
The money laundering lasted until the arrests of the scheme's leaders, prosecutors said.
Now, Paez's sentencing hearing is set for Aug. 15, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Others involved in the scheme who've been charged include two Florida residents, James Harmon Yarbrough and Jhonatan Suarez Florez, as well as 'alleged leader' Alberto David Benguait Jimenez, according to prosecutors.
Jimenez is a fugitive, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office encourages anyone with information about Jimenez to call the FBI at 858-320-1800.
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