For many of his profession as a federal drug agent, Ray Donovan had a singular focus: the seize of Mexican cartel chief Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. When Guzman was lastly arrested in early 2014, fentanyl trafficking was booming in the US, and Donovan shortly discovered his subsequent mission.
He employed an information scientist in an effort to map the fentanyl networks working on the East Coast. By reviewing the telephone information of the suspected traffickers, investigators noticed a sample of exercise that was unfamiliar to them.
“A ton of calls to China,” recalled Michael Mezner, one of many DEA brokers main the trouble. “I checked out that information from each angle, and I went to the information man and mentioned, 'I don't know what's happening right here, however I've by no means seen something like this in my life.'
It was a brand new dynamic: Chinese language legal teams have been laundering drug cash for Mexican cartels on an unprecedented scale.
In 2015, Donovan needed to flip his consideration to El Chapo after the chief of the Sinaloa cartel escaped from jail. By the point it was recovered a yr later, investigators digging into the fentanyl commerce had made one other vital discovery.
The identical Chinese language brokers who laundered the fentanyl proceeds have been now closely concerned in marijuana trafficking in the US.
“It was an eye-opening second,” Donovan mentioned.
What Donovan's staff was the primary to acknowledge has nationwide safety implications, consultants say. Over the previous decade, Chinese language organized crime teams in the US have quietly develop into the dominant cash launderers for Mexican cartels. They then used the earnings to renew the illicit marijuana commerce.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/marijuana-mexican-cartels-stunning-rise-chinese-money-launderers-rcna158030
