Gwinnett link helps feds bust money-laundering ring

AMLOSPHERE- Cash pickups of nearly $2 million from a Gwinnett County parking lot helped federal agents crack a drug money laundering ring, officials said.

A four-year operation to shut down so-called "black market peso exchange" laundering drug money from Mexico and Colombia netted two dozen arrests, federal officials said.

Overall, approximately $9 million, two kilograms of heroin and 26 kilograms of cocaine was seized, and a federal grand jury in Atlanta returned six indictments in the investigation, charging 32 with money laundering and drug violations.

Code-named "Operation Rainmaker," the sting operation used Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, posing as money launderers, to make cash pickups to identify drug traffickers.

"To attack the distribution of illegal drugs, we go after not only the drugs, but also the dirty money that the sale of this poison generates," said U.S. Attorney David Nahmias of "Operation Rainmaker."

"The large numbers of arrests and convictions demonstrates its success."

During the operation, ICE agents made 33 pickups of drug money in metro Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

In 2005, two of those pickups were in a Gwinnett grocery store parking lot. In a February pickup, ICE collected $948,526 in drug proceeds to be laundered. An April pickup in the same parking lot returned $999,970 in drug proceeds to be laundered.

The drug money from the two Gwinnett pickups was laundered through the black market peso exchange, which resulted in six indictments. On April 28, 2006, following up on information developed from these metro Atlanta pickups, agents seized approximately $803,000 and ledgers detailing the receipt, distribution and collection of payments for multitons of cocaine.

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