A Paraguayan national has pleaded guilty in a US court to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business involved in international money laundering. The 35-year-old man had previously been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, along with two co-defendants.
During 2018-2019, the defendant owned and operated a money exchange business in Paraguay, without the license to operate under US laws. Meanwhile, a Paraguayan couple with political ambition had accepted over $2 million in US currency from two individuals whom they believed to be drug traffickers. The couple was to launder these funds via an international network of bank accounts.
They traveled to the US to collect the money and transmitted it through the defendant’s unlicensed money exchange business. The defendant then transferred the ‘clean’ money back to accounts that the purported drug traffickers held. The defendant and the couple concealed the source of the funds by generating fraudulent invoices. However, the purported drug traffickers were actually two undercover FBI agents, involved in investigating this money laundering network.
Source: US Department of Justice
