Key Takeaways
- A cartel intermediary pleaded guilty to laundering $4M via crypto, facing up to 20 years in prison.
- The broker exchanged crypto deposits for cross-border dollars, enabling cartels to bypass authorities.
- This DOJ conviction advances a new task force initiative, escalating the US crackdown on crypto cartels.
Mexican Drug Kingpin Admits Participation in $4 Million Crypto Money Laundering Scheme
A large intermediary that backed the Mexican cartel’s money laundering activities between the U.S. and Mexico has been prosecuted.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Carlos Érick Vázquez González, a Mexican national, had pleaded guilty to money laundering crimes from the proceeds of drug trafficking activities after being extradited from Mexico in October.
The DOJ revealed that Vázquez González was a key intermediary for unidentified money brokers, who deposited the proceeds from drug sales into a cryptocurrency wallet under his custody. Vázquez González moved these funds to launder the money, exchanging crypto assets for dollars in Mexico and returning them to the same money brokers, but on the other side of the border.
While the press release failed to name the organization involved in these cash deliveries and pickups, reports link him with the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) criminal organization, led by Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, AKA “El Mencho,” who was killed in a joint operation in February.
Vázquez González received deposits of approximately $4 million from these brokers and accepted a $40K commission for his participation in the scheme.
As he pleaded guilty, Vázquez González faces up to 20 years in prison, and his sentence will be revealed on December 17.
The DOJ stressed that this prosecution was part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative established by President Trump’s “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” Executive Order, dedicated to “eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings.”
The prosecution and the guilty plea of Vázquez González come as the U.S. government has been pursuing the connection between cryptocurrency and criminal cartels.
In May, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 12 individuals and two companies that allegedly performed the same functions as Vázquez González, serving as financial money-laundering middlemen for the Sinaloa Cartel.
In July, the DEA seized $10 million in cryptocurrency derived from the Sinaloa Cartel’s drug trafficking operations.
