Money Laundering Case Dangerous for Agents

The just-concluded investigation of money laundering by Latin American drug cartels and Mexican bankers produced many close calls for the 10 U.S. Customs Service agents who worked undercover on the case for nearly three years.

But no event proved more harrowing than one last fall when an agent, acting as a courier for the Cali, Colombia, cartel, was shot and wounded during a mission to New York to retrieve $500,000 in drug proceeds.

Working out of a storefront office in Sante Fe Springs, the undercover agents became money launderers for the Cali and Juarez, Mexico, drug cartels.

They carried out their ruse until Monday, when federal indictments were unsealed in Los Angeles against three Mexican banks and more than 100 people, including 26 Mexican bankers. Authorities described it as the most far-reaching money laundering probe in law enforcement history.

In an interview Tuesday, John E. Hensley, chief of the Customs Service’s Los Angeles field office, which mounted the investigation, gave these details of the undercover agent’s brush with death:

The agent and his partner were dispatched from Los Angeles to New York to pick up the $500,000 from a local drug cartel contact. But the New York contact had engineered a double-cross against the bosses in Cali.

He surrendered the cash to the agents, but had a gang of Colombian “thugs” waiting in the wings to kill them and steal the money. In an instant, there was gunfire. One agent was shot in the hip. The other was able to return the fire, killing one of the Colombians.

Other customs agents, providing backup for the money pickup, descended on the Colombians, arresting two at the scene. Two others escaped but were later arrested by New York police.

The wounded agent eventually recovered.

The episode had an unexpected benefit. Word of the double-cross got back to Cali and served to allay any suspicions the cartel might have had about the undercover agents.

The man accused of heading the Cali cartel’s money laundering activities had his guard down Monday when he arrived in Los Angeles for what he had been tricked into believing was a business meeting with the undercover agents.

Oscar Armando Saavedra, in his 60s, was taken into custody as he stepped off a flight from Miami.

“That was another close call,” said Hensley, “though not as life-threatening.”

The customs chief said Saavedra had flown from Colombia to Miami on Saturday, apparently to spend the weekend with a girlfriend before continuing to Los Angeles on Monday.

But customs agents lost track of him in Miami when he failed to check into the hotel where he normally stays. Nor were they aware of his whereabouts at midday Monday when Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno announced the federal indictments.

“We were very nervous that he might have heard about the indictments and disappeared before we could get our hands on him,” Hensley said. “Fortunately, he didn’t, and he boarded the plane in Miami completely unaware of what was going on.”

Saavedra was arrested without incident Monday evening at Los Angeles International Airport.

Federal authorities said they had arrested 42 people named in the indictments.

So far, the government has seized $79 million from bank accounts believed to be controlled by the drug cartels or from American holdings of the Mexican banks named in the indictments: Bancomer, Banca Serfin and Confia.

On Tuesday, prosecutors released a 42-page affidavit detailing meetings between Bancomer officials and undercover customs agents during which the bankers allegedly agreed to launder drug money and offered advice on how to avoid detection.