An owner of an vehicle dealership in the U.S.-Mexico border town of Calexico, California has been charged with money laundering as well as violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, federal prosecutors in San Diego, California announced Tuesday. Ignacio Gonzalez, part owner of Del Valle Auto Sales, was indicted for allegedly using the dealership to launder tens of thousands of dollars he believed to be illicit drug proceeds. Gonzalez, 43, allegedly was snared in a sting operation and accepted as payment for vehicles cash "represented by a law enforcement officer to be the proceeds of … drug trafficking," prosecutors said. Specifically, he accepted more than $40,000 in "dirty" cash for the purchase of vehicles, prosecutors said. They also alleged that he failed to file required Forms 8300 with the Internal Revenue Service when accepting the cash and conspired to make structured deposits into a bank account to prevent the institution filing Currency Transaction Reports – both Bank Secrecy
↧