The white gift bag with a cheery “Happy Birthday” printed on the side didn’t have a present in it. It had $226,000 in cash that the Sinaloa drug cartel needed laundered, authorities allege.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a multi-count indictment that charged more than a dozen Los Angeles members of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel and Chinese currency brokers with conspiring to launder drug money for years. The lead defendant, Edgar Joel Martinez-Reyes, 45, is a resident of East Los Angeles. The investigation so far has yielded $5 million in cash, more than 300 pounds of cocaine, 92 pounds of methamphetamine, 3,000 pills of Ecstasy, and 44 pounds of magic mushrooms. According to the indictment, the list of defendants includes Peiji “Dr. P” Tong, Sai “Tommy” Zhang, Chengwu “Ocean” He, Raul “Batman” Contreras, Jiaxuan “Edward” He, Diego Acosta Ovalle, and others.
