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SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Greed drives drug dealers into the San Francisco Bay Area. An Oakland man who helped dealers wire huge amounts of cash back to Mexico and Honduras was sentenced to prison this week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
Felipe de Jesus Ornelas Mora, the owner of Rincon Musical money transmitting business in Oakland, was sentenced on Tuesday to serve 18 months in federal prison. Ornelas Mora, 51, previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
“Money and greed are the foundation of the cartel business model and Ornelas Mora provided a lifeline by laundering drug proceeds,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Brian Clark. “This sentence underscores our commitment to aggressively pursue every level of the drug supply chain to include those facilitators who enable transnational criminal networks.”
According to his plea agreement, Ornelas Mora admitted that he and his employees knowingly laundered drug proceeds by accepting large amounts of cash from drug dealers and wiring it to Mexico and Honduras between 2020 and 2022.
“Facilitating the profitability of drug trafficking by laundering illegal drug proceeds perpetuates the deadly drug epidemic in our communities, and we will not stand for it,” said CI Acting Special Agent in Charge Michael Mosley. “Taking money launderers off the street and leading criminal investigations that land them in prison is what CI special agents do.”
Investigators said they found evidence of the money laundering scheme on cell phones of arrested drug dealers. Wire receipts found on the phone of one drug dealer, “Drug Trafficker 1,” showed that in 2020, the trafficker wired more than $109,000 to Mexico and Honduras from Rincon. Sixty wire transfers were made for “Drug Trafficker 1” using the names of unrelated customers.
Federal agents used two undercover confidential witnesses, “CW-1” and “CW-2,” to conduct multiple wire transactions at Rincon. CW-1 and CW-2 told Rincon cashiers that they did not want their names and IDs used to send large amounts of cash from Rincon to Mexico.
Two Rincon cashiers structured the cash brought in by CW-1 and CW-2 into multiple wire transfers that fell below $3,000 to avoid arousing the suspicion of MSB-1 and the U.S. authorities. Employees of Rincon also disguised wire payments as routine remittances by using the names and IDs of legitimate customers.
“This defendant knowingly aided Bay Area drug dealers by disguising drug money as remittances and laundering it through his business through wire payments to Mexico,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Robbins. “By disrupting the flow of drug money, this Office demonstrates its commitment to a sweeping approach to combatting the drug trade.”
The case was part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation.
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