Tag: money laundering

Virginia Democrat Louise Lucas Charged with Racketeering and Money Laundering in Cannabis Corruption Case, Patel Blasts Her During Press Conference

Federal authorities have charged 82-year-old Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas with racketeering, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to distribute marijuana, and gun possession as part of an alleged public corruption scheme tied to a cannabis business that she co-owns.

Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate and one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, surrendered to authorities Thursday, according to a Justice Department spokesperson.

Authorities also charged and took into custody a half-dozen others in the alleged scheme.

Virginia journalist Brandon Scope wrote on X, “sources tell me that members of Sen. Louise Lucas’ family have already been arrested.”

The indictment alleges that members of the conspiracy used various business entities to disguise the proceeds of illegal marijuana distribution.

It further claims that Lucas “used her political position in the Virginia state senate to insulate” the enterprise “from criminal scrutiny, to further the goal of wealth accumulation.”

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Ilhan Omar Faces Money Laundering Charge After Oversight Committee Drops Stunning Revelation

A shuttered winery co-owned by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband sold investors empty wine barrels, House Oversight Chairman James Comer alleged Sunday, adding a new accusation to his committee’s scrutiny of the couple’s finances.

The Kentucky Republican made the claim about eStCru LLC during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” saying the California business had closed. Comer cited press reports but did not identify an investor, transaction, or document supporting the empty-barrel allegation.

Comer, who is leading the congressional investigation into Omar, also said his committee had identified “multiple fronts where you could get a search warrant issued” against the Minnesota Democrat.

The winery and a second business tied to Omar’s husband, Timothy Mynett, have drawn questions over sharp changes in their reported worth.

In a financial disclosure submitted May 14, 2024, Omar valued Mynett’s stake in eStCru at $15,001 to $50,000. The following year, she listed the winery and his venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, at a combined $6 million to $30 million.

By March 26, an amended disclosure reported no equity value in either company.

The revision followed a Feb. 5 letter from Comer demanding that Mynett turn over financial records, investor lists, and an explanation of how the businesses had been valued.

Nine days after Omar amended the filing, eStCru was legally terminated. Mynett’s business partner, William Hailer, signed the April 4 paperwork.

Omar’s spokesperson has previously blamed her husband’s accountants for an error that “created a misleading picture of far greater wealth.”

The winery had already become the subject of a lawsuit. A California businessman sued Mynett and Hailer in 2024, alleging they had “fraudulently misrepresented” eStCru as a legitimate business after promising to triple his $300,000 investment.

Mynett and Hailer have disputed the allegations and denied wrongdoing.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro of the District of Columbia confirmed last week that her office is investigating Omar’s financial disclosures. A separate criminal investigation into her immigration records has also reached members of her family.

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US Hits Bank of America With $1.2 Billion in Penalties for Security Violations

The U.S. Treasury fined Bank of America $1.21 billion for violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, the department announced Oct. 13.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed the penalty for the bank’s failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border, according to the Treasury.

“When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

Bank of America is the second-largest bank in the United States and the sixth-largest in the world, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a treasury bureau that regulates and supervises banks and financial institutions.

“Every year, [Bank of America] processes hundreds of trillions of dollars in transactions across the globe,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said in a statement. “It has a high—and increasing—risk profile for money laundering, terrorist financing, and other illicit activities.”

Almost two years ago, the bank signed an order with the agency and committed to fixing problems found in its compliance with the federal Bank Secrecy Act, Gould said.

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American Express Hit With $350 Million Fine For Anti-Money Laundering Lapses

American Express has been ordered to pay a $350 million penalty over what federal regulators described as “critical deficiencies” in its anti-money laundering controls.

The regulators said it missed about $13 billion in suspected activity over more than a decade.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced the civil penalty and a cease-and-desist order on Thursday against American Express National Bank, the Utah-based banking subsidiary of the credit-card company.

The Federal Reserve separately issued a concurrent enforcement action against parent company American Express and its subsidiaries, citing significant deficiencies in the company’s enterprise-wide anti-money-laundering compliance program.

According to the OCC, American Express National Bank failed to tailor its federally mandated anti-money laundering risk assessment to the way it actually did business.

The regulator said the bank focused too much on its “relatively narrow” demand deposit account products and services while not giving enough attention to the risks associated with its “more dominant” credit and charge card products.

The bank also experienced what the OCC described as “systemic breakdowns” in its processes for monitoring and reporting suspicious activity.

Those deficiencies led to failures to identify and report roughly $13 billion in suspected trade-based money-laundering activity, including card charges and repayments associated with those charges, according to the OCC.

Trade-based money laundering generally involves using commercial transactions to disguise the proceeds of crime or move illicit value, including through manipulating the price, quantity, or quality of goods involved in trade.

In some cases, the transactions involved accounts associated with bank insiders, according to the OCC.

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Communist Cox Heir Denied Release Over Alleged Hamas Funding, Claimed Openness To “Global Terror Activities”

Local news outlet El Español reports that Spain’s National Court denied release for Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the communist centimillionaire and heir to the massive Cox media fortune, for the fourth time, citing a flight risk while US authorities seek his extradition over allegations of financing Hamas and money laundering. 

Chambers, an heir to the US billionaire family behind Cox Enterprises, has been detained since early July. He has been accused by the US government of transferring $7.5 million to Hamas from the US to Tunisia.

Here’s more from the outlet:

The events allegedly took place while Chambers was visiting Tunisia. In fact, he was received at the Iranian Embassy in that country, as revealed by the National Court in a new ruling issued this Friday.

. . . 

Furthermore, the resolution issued this Friday by the National Court details that “associates” of the defendant allegedly admitted that Iran intended to “obtain money from him” and that Chambers was open to joining “global terrorist activities”.

On the other hand, the US accuses him of having participated in “direct actions” against the company Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer , whose office allegedly became one of the “targets of the campaigns” of the accused and his “associates”.

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DOJ Seeks $61M in Iranian Oil Proceeds Laundered Through Binance Accounts

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed to forfeit $61 million in crypto it says was generated from Iranian black-market oil sales.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Monday it is seizing and seeking to forfeit $61 million in cryptocurrency that it alleges came from black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian oil.

That sum is a fraction of the operation prosecutors describe in the civil forfeiture complaint. A cluster of self-custodied wallets received and distributed more than $1.5 billion in oil proceeds, routing funds to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked businesses, other crypto addresses and an Iranian exchange, according to the filing. Two China-based firms, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, allegedly used trading accounts at Binance to launder proceeds and funnel them to the Iranian government and its proxies.

It comes after the U.S. tries to crack down on Iran’s use of the leading cryptocurrency: the U.S. in July said that it had frozen crypto linked to the Iranian regime, mostly in the form of Tether’s stablecoin; Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year.

There was no mention of bitcoin in Monday’s claim — but the Iranian government is also using bitcoin to skirt around sanctions. Bitcoin has no issuer, so no blacklist function and bitcoin held without intermediaries can’t be frozen

“The Government of Iran relies on black-market sales of sanctioned crude oil to fund its military and foster terrorism in the Middle East and around the world, along with other malign efforts to develop a nuclear program and ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads,” Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean S. Buckley said in a statement. 

“As alleged in the complaint filed today, the Government of Iran used a network of cryptocurrency actors in China and elsewhere to launder more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil money intended to benefit the Iranian military and the terror-designated IRGC.”

The filing alleges that the illicit oil money was laundered via Chinese companies Blessed Trust Limited and Hexa Whale Trading Limited.

Once the money was laundered, it was funneled back to Iran’s government, its agents, and its proxies, feds said. 

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in July said Iran had been dodging sanctions by accepting pay in bitcoin from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. 

OFAC said at the time that Hormuz Safe, developed by Iran’s Ministry of Economy, “accepts payment in bitcoin and other digital assets” so it can bypass sanctions. 

The Financial Times last week reported that the Middle Eastern country was using bitcoin to settle cross-border transactions through Iranian crypto exchanges after the central bank advised its countrymen to do anything necessary to help the economy.

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Former Congressman Sentenced To 10 Years In Federal Prison After Secretly Lobbying For Foreign Regime And Laundering Millions

A former U.S. congressman will now spend a full decade behind bars after being handed a 10-year federal prison sentence on Friday.

Former Florida politician David Rivera was slapped with the decade-long sentence after being convicted of secretly acting as an unregistered foreign agent for a hostile regime, failing to register under FARA rules, and conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars tied to the illicit scheme.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in May, Rivera and Nuhfer were found guilty by a federal jury following a trial that exposed the secret Venezuela-linked lobbying arrangement.

The previous Gateway Pundit report detailed prosecutors’ allegations that Rivera and Nuhfer accepted millions connected to the Maduro government while concealing the relationship and using Rivera’s political connections to pursue Venezuela’s interests in the United States.

Rivera had faced a statutory maximum of as much as 60 years behind bars following his conviction.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian handed down the 120-month sentence on October 2 following Rivera’s conviction on conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), violating FARA, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and four counts involving transactions in criminally derived property, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Rivera, 61, represented Florida as a Republican in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2013.

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Spain Clears Way For US Extradition Case Against Cox Media Heir Turned Communist Financier

The Spanish government has begun a process that could soon lead to the US extradition of Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the communist centimillionaire and heir to the massive Cox media fortune.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Chambers moved a step closer to extradition to the US after Spain’s Cabinet allowed the case to proceed to court.

Chambers has been detained since his July 10 arrest in Ibiza and is wanted by the US on money laundering, riot and riot conspiracy charges linked to 2023 pro-Palestinian demonstrations and transfers to a company in Tunisia, where he previously lived.

Government spokeswoman Elma Saiz confirmed to the outlet that Spanish courts would now review the request. If judges approve extradition, the final decision returns to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Cabinet.

We profiled Chambers in July, shortly after he was arrested, and noted that he was a major funder of America’s radical left and had been described by pro-Palestinian activist Laith Marouf as “the new Soros.“

Chambers founded the Babochki Collective and is a major backer of Stop Cop City, Palestine Action US (later renamed Unity of Fields), and related legal defense efforts. He allegedly funded bail, legal fees, and direct-action campaigns targeting police-training projects and Israeli-linked defense firms, while also building networks with far-left activists.

A communist and a convert to Islam from New York, Chambers allegedly used his $250 million fortune to fund “revolutionary organizing.”

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Georgian National Charged for Conspiracy to Launder Proceeds of $1.3 Billion Health Care Fraud Scheme

A Georgian national has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston for allegedly conspiring to launder the proceeds of a $1.3 billion health care fraud scheme while he was illegally in the United States.

Erekle Gugava, 33, a Georgian national, was indicted on one count of money laundering conspiracy. Gugava fled the United States in July 2025, after the alleged conduct.

According to court documents, Gugava was a money launderer for the foreign-based organization that spearheaded the largest health care fraud case ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice, dubbed Operation Gold Rush. The organization, based in Russia and elsewhere, orchestrated a multi-billion-dollar health care fraud and money laundering scheme to target, exploit and steal from Medicare and other health insurers.

As alleged in the charging documents, Gugava purportedly owned ND Medical Solutions, LLC (ND Medical), a durable medical equipment company located in Pennsylvania, between February 2025 and July 2025. During the limited five-month span of Gugava’s purported ownership, ND Medical submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent DME claims to Medicare, private health insurance companies that contracted to provide Medicare supplemental insurance policies, private employer-sponsored plans and union health plans. These insurers paid ND Medical approximately $6.5 million.

As part of the scheme, Gugava allegedly facilitated the deposit and transfer of fraud proceeds. Among other things, he allegedly opened several bank accounts in the name of ND Medical – for which he was the sole signatory – and deposited checks from Medicare Supplemental Insurers and other health insurers into the ND Medical bank accounts. The funds were then ultimately transferred to various overseas bank accounts for the benefit of the organization.

As alleged in charging documents, the fraudulent claims relied, in part, on the stolen identities of citizens from Massachusetts, across New England, and throughout the United States to justify the fraudulent billings. Many of these individuals, including elderly and disabled Americans, reported their concerns to Medicare and its contractors after receiving explanation of benefit forms that reflected them purportedly receiving DME that they did not in fact receive, that was purportedly prescribed by doctors whom they had never visited and purportedly delivered from ND Medical—a DME company with which they were unfamiliar.

As further alleged, the organization exploited the United States’ financial system by depositing insurance reimbursement checks from the fraud. The health care fraud proceeds were particularly susceptible to laundering because they originated from legitimate sources. Medicare and established private insurance carriers, giving the funds the initial appearance of legitimacy.

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Mexican national operating money service charged with laundering cartel drug proceeds

Christopher A. Bravo Marin, 46, was indicted by a federal grand jury last week charging him with conspiring to launder at least $750,000 in drug proceeds on behalf of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), one of the most prolific and dangerous drug cartels in Mexico, according to U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen.

Marin, aka Bravo, a Mexican national was arrested Monday by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents. He appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge in Minneapolis on Aug. 25, 2026.

According to the charges:

From at least February 2023 to at least February 2026, Bravo, an employee of a Minnesota-based money transmitting business, conspired with members of a CJNG drug distribution cell in Minnesota to launder drug proceeds and transfer them to cartel leaders in Mexico through the money transmitter where he worked. Bravo used his position at the money transmitter and his understanding of his employer’s compliance policies and procedures to evade their anti-money laundering controls and conceal the illicit source of the funds he laundered. Cartel members paid Bravo approximately $40-50 for each transfer that he laundered.

To transfer the funds, Bravo allegedly structured the amount of money to be sent to Mexico across multiple transfers, ensuring that each transfer was always right below $1,000—the money transmitter’s threshold for collecting and verifying a customer’s identification document. Bravo created fake names of Hispanic origin to serve as the senders and sent the money to straw beneficiaries in Mexico whose names he received from cartel members.

After processing the transfers, Bravo forged the signature of the senders on each payment confirmation receipt to make the transfer appear legitimate and texted screenshots of the receipts to his co-conspirators so that the funds could be redeemed in Mexico.

Bravo is charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A federal district judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Trial attorney Javier Urbina of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section (MNF) and Assistant United States Attorney Rebecca E. Kline for the District of Minnesota are prosecuting the case.

The U.S. Attorney’s press release explained that MNF’s mission is to take the profit out of crime, eliminate drug cartels, and protect the U.S. financial system. MNF pursues criminal prosecutions and criminal and civil asset recovery actions involving: financial facilitators who launder profits for criminals; financial institutions and their officers and employees whose actions threaten the U.S. financial system and financial institutions; international money launderers who support transnational organized crime; and the top command and control of international drug trafficking organizations.

MNF’s Bank Integrity Unit investigates and prosecutes banks and other financial institutions, including their officers, managers and employees whose actions threaten the integrity of the individual institution or the wider financial system.

“This defendant strengthened a criminal infrastructure by helping transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug proceeds to cartel leaders,” said Rosen. “My office remains committed to taking down drug trafficking organizations that threaten the public safety of the people of Minnesota.”

Bravo was released from custody on an appearance bond after making his initial court appearance.

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