Affidavits Allege Drug Ties in Money Laundering Case

The indicted former manager of the Bank of Coronado’s San Ysidro branch may have participated in the illegal laundering of as much as $20 million, according to government affidavits unsealed this week.

In addition, the documents, unsealed in U.S. District Court on Monday, reveal for the first time that some of the alleged money laundering involved people believed to be narcotics traffickers.

Guadalupe M. (Cha Cha) Alcantar, the branch manager who is on leave of absence from the bank, also made frequent telephone calls to a Tijuana restaurant described as a meeting and distribution point for heroin dealers, the documents say.

Alcantar also allowed many of the Mexican nationals who opened as many as 18 accounts at the branch to use her Chula Vista home address on bank records, the affidavits said.

The documents, written by U.S. Customs Agent Steven J. Trent in January and March, detail for the first time the alleged money-laundering dealings between Alcantar and residents on both sides of the border. In addition, prosecutors for the first time claim that Alcantar had a quid pro quo for her actions --”to derive profit” for herself and her former husband, Tomas Alcantar.

The documents, written to support the government’s request for wiretaps on Alcantar’s office and home telephones, also reveal that the bank’s branch security manager suspected that about 10% of the branch’s accounts were “narcotic related.”

The documents include several direct references to drug trafficking, explain how pesos are converted into dollars and dollars to pesos, and detail how several individuals allegedly deposited large amounts of cash without reporting the transactions to the government, as required, or if the reports were filed, they were incorrect.

Alcantar and four others were indicted Friday on 44 counts of conspiring to defraud the bank, filing false cash transaction reports and failing to file such reports.

Much of the information contained in the documents, written in March, was not included in the indictments issued last week, and several of the people identified in the recently released documents were not named in the indictments.

“The affidavit has nothing to do with the indictments, and the indictments show that (prosecutors) apparently were unable to prove the allegations that were in the affidavit,” said Jerry Caughlin, Alcantar’s attorney. He added that Alcantar “denies any wrongdoing whatsoever.”

James G. Klingensmith, president and chief executive of Crown Bancorp, the holding company for the Bank of Coronado, could not be reached for comment. Last week, Crown severed its relationship with The Gail Stoorza Co., its public relations firm, as part of cost-cutting efforts.

The government is “continuing to work on related violations,” according to one law enforcement source close to the case. “The investigation will attempt to trace a lot of the money that went in there. We’re looking into additional violations against several Mexican citizens and a couple of U.S. citizens.”

Meanwhile, in a related development Wednesday, Tomas Alcantar and Alfredo DeLaRosa, who were named in the indictment Friday, were arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Edward A. Infante. Both pleaded not guilty and bail was set at $35,000 for Alcantar and $10,000 for DeLaRosa.

DeLaRosa is an employee of P&L; Currency Exchange in San Ysidro, which was identified several times in Trent’s affidavits as a conduit for the laundered money.

The affidavits state that Guadalupe Alcantar met after hours at the bank several times with various Mexican nationals. Often, according to the documents, packages were unloaded from a car parked near the bank and either brought into the bank or moved to another vehicle.

Two of the packages were described as a “bulky brown leather portfolio” and as the size of a large telephone book “wrapped in tan plastic.”

The documents reveal that the San Ysidro branch of the Bank of Coronado sent three times the amount of cash to the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco as was sent by other banks of similar size in San Diego.

In addition, the records show that the branch received more cash for deposit than it was paying out. The average per-day shipment to the Federal Reserve from the branch between April 30 and Oct. 24, 1984, was $316,000, while the average daily shipment from the Federal Reserve to the branch was $182,749. A Federal Reserve Bank executive interviewed by government prosecutors said that the Bank of Coronado’s transfer of large amounts of cash last year was an attempt to move money to several “offshore” entities without “raising suspicions or interest from any one correspondent bank.”

In addition, the bank transferred $5.7 million in $100,000 increments to savings and loans throughout the country between April and October last year, the affidavit said. The money likely was used to buy certificates of deposit, the report said.

The affidavit also revealed that, of the $42.5 million in cash sent to the Federal Reserve by the Bank of Coronado between April and October, 1984, $39.2 million of that was shipped from the San Ysidro branch.

The documents show that bank officials were suspicious of Alcantar.

For example, on Feb. 21, Mary Hays, security manager for the Bank of Coronado, told Alcantar that they should notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Alcantar received a $500,000 cash deposit to open an account from an undercover Customs agent.

Alcantar, according to the affidavits, told Hays “a series of lies . . . intended to mitigate Hays’ suspicions.”

Alcantar then told Hays that “this is a bank, not a church,” according to the documents, and that if “they sell hard dope, they sell hard dope.” The bank, she said, makes money simply by counting the cash.

Hays reportedly told Alcantar, “Look, Cha Cha, probably 10% of your accounts down there are dope related.”

The investigation, the documents state, is sensitive because “even elementary surveillance” of Mexican nationals traveling from the bank’s San Ysidro branch to Mexico “cannot be achieved without what must be currently categorized as a great risk of danger.”

San Ysidro area bankers are keeping a close watch on this case because of the possible effects on their Mexican banking customers. Attracting non-resident depositors has become a priority for many banks there, and industry officials fear that a widespread scandal involving laundering of drug money could scare off many of those clients.