A top Los Zeta cartel associate in Texas who is serving a 20-year sentence for money laundering will now serve an additional five years in prison for trying to bribe a judge in Texas.
Mexican drug cartels, along with an untold number of global criminal and terrorist organizations, launder billions of dollars every year through banks and money service businesses. In order to curb this cartel activity, the Mexican government has severely limited the amount of American dollars that can be deposited into numbered accounts. A side effect of this policy, however, has been that Mexicans and travelers who pass through the country’s airports can quickly and easily profit from buying U.S. dollars at a loss, then selling them a few feet away for pesos at a roughly 3 percent profit.
The man identified as one of the Gulf Cartel’s top money men on the Texas side of the border will spend 14 years in federal prison.
