An Iranian businessman will be spending more than three years in a U.S. prison for laundering money for Mexican cartels. The man used firms along the U.S.-Mexico Border to launder illicit funds, according to court documents.
This week, 51-year-old Mohsen Mohammadi-Mohammadi went before U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo in Laredo, who sentenced him to 40 months for money laundering, a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced. Mohammadi pleaded guilty to the charge in December. After his sentence, he is expected to be deported.
Mohammadi worked with various individuals to launder money using a tactic called black market peso exchange, prosecutors argued, where they would trade commodities internationally so as to give cartels their funds in Mexican cash.
Court documents claim that from 2011 to 2013, Mohammadi would have associates pick up drug proceeds in U.S. cities and move them to Laredo to purchase and sell premium perfumes and other items. Prosecutors claim Mohammadi fled to Iran in 2017 after the case became public and it was not until recent travel to New York that allowed authorities to arrest him.
The use of border city perfume stores to launder cartel money is not new. In 2012, a federal judge in New York sentenced Vikram Datta to 20-years in prison for his role in using his stores in Laredo to launder money for the Sinaloa Cartel, a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed. Ptosecutors claimed that from 2009 to 2011, Datta used his business to launder millions.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.