No Bond for 2 Suspects in Laundering of Drug Funds

A U.S. magistrate ordered an 80-year-old woman and her daughter to be held without bond Monday on charges that they attempted to conceal, or “launder,” $36.1 million in suspected drug proceeds through San Diego financial institutions during the last 15 months.

Also charged in the case was an investment officer at a Coronado bank.

Two other members of the elderly woman’s family are fugitives in connection with the case, federal authorities said, and another relative is being held as a material witness.

The charges come at a time when U.S. law enforcement authorities are cracking down on criminal efforts to launder, or legitimize, millions of dollars in cash proceeds from drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises. By depositing illicit funds in U.S. banks and other financial institutions, drug traffickers are able to invest their huge cash windfalls as though the money was legitimate business earnings.

Ordered jailed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Monday were Marguerite Coninck, 80, also known as Stephanie Denis, who was born in South Africa and holds a Belgian passport but may be a Colombian citizen, and her daughter, Beatriz Mejia Coninck, 44, a Colombian citizen who is residing legally in San Diego County.

U.S. Magistrate Irma Gonzalez said both suspects would present a risk of flight if permitted to go free on bond.

“They have nothing to lose by going back to Colombia, either one of them,” Gonzalez said after a 3 1/2-hour hearing during which defense attorneys asked the court to set bond or place the women under some kind of unconventional “house arrest.”

The pair and Guillermina Watson, an investment officer at Bank of America’s Coronado branch, were arrested last Tuesday and charged with ignoring federal requirements that financial institutions file government forms, known as currency transaction reports, for each cash transaction of more than $10,000. The requirements, part of the Bank Secrecy Act, are the government’s principal tools in the prosecution of money-laundering schemes.

All three suspects have pleaded not guilty, defense attorneys said.

Between January, 1985, and this month, U.S. authorities charged, the two suspects and others received $36.1 million in suspected drug proceeds, exchanged much of the money for checks at Blue House Financial Inc., a San Ysidro currency exchange, and deposited the checks in Bank of America’s Coronado branch, California Commerce Bank in San Diego and Balboa National Bank in San Ysidro. No wrongdoing was alleged against any of the financial institutions.

The funds were later forwarded to accounts in Colombia, Panama and elsewhere, officials said.

The suspects received much of the money in bags during brief meetings with unidentified men in parking lots in Orange County, according to a criminal complaint. In court-approved telephone wiretaps, the suspects used code words such as “chicken,” “cheese” and “donations” to refer to cash, authorities said.

The third suspect, Watson, a Chilean-born naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Ramona, was released Monday on $100,000 bond.

Federal prosecutors charge that the suspects received a commission of $1.8 million for agreeing to launder the money.

A grand jury is expected to hear the case later this week.

A preliminary hearing is set for next Tuesday.