AP News, February 8th, 2007
Drug money has largely transformed the New York's wire transfer industry into a tool of the narcotics trade, federal prosecutors said Wednesday as they charged 27 wire transfer store owners and employees with money laundering.
The 27 people were arrested early Wednesday in a series of raids on stores in Queens, Long Island and in Westchester County in which law enforcement agents said they seized about $300,000 in cash, some of which was hidden in ceilings and wall safes. The defendants were accused of laundering a total of $2 million in drug money to Colombia.
The raids were part of Operation Pinpoint, the latest phase in an effort to drive drug money out of the wire transfer industry, U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said Wednesday.
"The sale of narcotics generates huge amounts of bulk cash that the traffickers must launder," Mauskopf said.
The defendants made the money transfer industry a tool of the drug trade to accomplish that end, she said. The industry is designed partly to serve recent immigrants in the United States who do not have bank accounts and need to send money home to relatives.
The two-year undercover investigation was conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau and the New York Police Department as part of a task force created in 1992 to investigate financial crimes.
The defendants typically structured the remittances into numerous small transactions to keep the dollar amount of each one below the $3,000 legal threshold, and they received a commission on each transfer, authorities said.
If convicted of money laundering, the defendants each could face up to 20 years in prison.
