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The
the U.S. Border Patrol seized more than $3 million in cash that it says
two men were trying to smuggle into Mexico from California this week.
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For
the agency that deals with border security, it was a major intercept of
smuggled cash. The Border Patrol noted most of its past seizures have
been in smaller amounts: $300,000, $51,000 and $43,000.
"This
is one of our larger cash seizures," said Ralph DeSio, spokesman for
the San Diego office of US Customs and Border Protection. Normally, he
said, the big figure reported is the value of confiscated drugs.
Currency smuggling and money laundering
are the lifeblood for the Mexican cartels moving the majority of heroin,
cocaine and methamphetamine across the US border as well as for human
traffickers.
If the sophisticated
gangs can't get their tens of millions of dollars in cash home each
year, the US market wouldn't be nearly as attractive. And California is
central to those type of activities, experts say.
Los Angeles is known as the nation's "epicenter" for money laundering by international drug cartels,
federal officials said in 2014, after raiding businesses and seizing an
estimated $100 million in cash and from bank accounts around the world.
San Diego is a major hub for actually
trafficking the proceeds from illicit activities, DeSio said. The money
was found in a Volkswagen Passat, he said, a car not as likely to
attract attention.
The $3 million, however, pales in comparison to seizures elsewhere, such as the $24 million seized in June by Miami-Dade Police in Florida. Officers seized $23 million in cash in 2011 during
Operation Four Horsemen in metro Atlanta, a major trafficking hub for
drugs coming to the East Coast and cash deliveries back to Mexico.
The
Mexican cartels use tractor-trailers to deliver the cash from Atlanta
stash houses to the cartel safes in Mexico, said Rodney Benson, who was
head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Atlanta at the
time of the seizure.
The San Diego Border Patrol agents made a
dent in the cash flow Tuesday when they arrested two men in Escondido,
just north of San Diego and about 40 miles from the Mexican border.
An
agent pulled over a Kia Forte and found nearly $34,000 stashed in the
console, the agency said. A 53-year-old American was arrested. Other
agents were able to locate a Volkswagen Passat suspected of having
driven in tandem with the Kia, the agency said.
They arrested the
driver, a 41-year-old Mexican national, for suspicion of currency
smuggling. The trunk of the Passat is where they then recovered $3,018,000, the agency said.
The Border Patrol turned over the two suspects to Homeland Security, and they now face federal charges for currency smuggling.