Money-Laundering Trial Ends in Acquittal

A federal jury Tuesday acquitted the ex-manager of a San Ysidro bank on five money-laundering charges stemming from a 1984 federal investigation into intricate manipulations involving the exchange rate for Mexican pesos.

However, Guadalupe (Cha Cha) Alcantar, former manager of the San Ysidro branch of the Bank of Coronado, still faces sentencing for a May 16 conviction on three charges that she embezzled more than $200,000 and defrauded the bank by manipulating the peso exchange rate.

After U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster threw out three of the prosecution’s eight money-laundering charges, jurors ended the two-week trial by deliberating for just over two hours, according to Raymond J. Coughlan, Alcantar’s attorney.

“The case involved what the government had called money laundering,” Coughlan said Tuesday. “But what she was technically charged with was filing false currency transaction reports.

“In fact, the judge dismissed three of the counts before the jury ever got them, and he dismissed as a matter of law the primary legal basis for the rest of the government’s case. He, in effect, said she’d done nothing wrong.”

Both the money-laundering and the embezzlement cases stemmed from a 1984 Internal Revenue Service investigation into the manipulation for profit of the exchange rate for pesos. As part of that undercover investigation, a pair of IRS agents approached Alcantar and encouraged her to “not fill out the (required) forms,” Coughlan said. Cash transactions involving more than $10,000 must be reported to the federal government.

After growing suspicious of one of the agents, Alcantar “called her boss and reported them . . . and later filled out the forms,” Coughlan said.

In the trial that produced the three guilty verdicts on May 16, Alcantar was convicted of scheming to use the Bank of Coronado’s money to play the peso market, by transferring money among U.S. and Mexican banks and money exchanges to benefit from the Mexican currency’s fluctuating value.

Coughlan maintained that while Alcantar’s actions might not have been “the most kosher use of her time at the bank . . . not one dime was ever lost” and no crime was committed.

Although Alcantar was found guilty of three charges of embezzlement, she was acquitted on the remaining 28. She faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the three counts on which she was found guilty. Sentencing in that case is set for July 16, according to Coughlan, who plans to appeal the guilty verdicts.