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Worker at the Inc. indicted

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Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

A federal grand jury in New York handed up a money laundering indictment Monday against a bookkeeper for The Inc., a record label owned by Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record corporation.

The indictment of bookkeeper Cynthia Brent follows a two-year probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which was investigating whether Irving “Gotti” Lorenzo, The Inc.’s founder, was laundering proceeds from drug sales for a former narcotics kingpin named Kenneth McGriff, better known in rap music circles as “Supreme.”

FBI agents and a Justice Department task force raided The Inc.’s Manhattan headquarters in early 2002 and seized several bank accounts connected to the label, as well as tens of thousands of dollars in cash from an office safe.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Bookkeeper indictment -- An article in Tuesday’s Business sectionabout the indictment of Cynthia Brent, a bookkeeper for record labelThe Inc., on money-laundering charges said she conspired to conductimproper financial transactions from 1987 to 2003. Brent was accusedof money laundering from 1997 to 2003.


The indictment, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, doesn’t name Lorenzo or McGriff as defendants in the case. Nor does it mention The Inc. or identify Brent as an employee of the label.

According to the indictment, Brent conspired from 1987 to 2003 to conduct improper financial transactions, involving cash proceeds from narcotics trafficking, for the purpose of evading currency tax reporting requirements. The indictment contends that Brent helped camouflage bank deposits of more than $100,000 by breaking them down into multiple transactions of less than $10,000 at several financial institutions.

Brent, who also goes by the name Cynthia Carr, couldn’t be reached for comment. Representatives for The Inc., formerly called Murder Inc., and McGriff were also unavailable.

Universal Music Group declined to comment as did officials in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

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