Published: 12:00 a.m., Sunday, December 12, 2010

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Drug-dealers-turn-to-maids-moms-875944.php

Until the moment she took $500 from a friend as payment for making a bank deposit, Gloria Cuero says she was just a church-going courthouse security guard.

But the friend was a seasoned Colombian heroin dealer, and Cuero committed a crime by laundering drug money and helping him stash dope cash.

“It happened. I have been punished and I am moving on with my life,” she told the Houston Chronicle. “Getting mad at anyone won't change anything.”

By their own admissions, Cuero and a housekeeper — who like Cuero was a Colombian immigrant living in Florida — were sucked into a money-laundering and heroin-smuggling ring that stretched from South America to Houston, Miami, New York, New Jersey and Detroit. They say they just needed some quick money.

What the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration dubbed Operation Red Dolly offers an inside look at an organization based in Houston that for at least two years smuggled the drugs and illegally stashed money. Six people, all Colombians, were convicted and sentenced in Houston.

The money was part of an invisible pipeline that the U.S. Justice Department contends allows Mexican and Colombian drug-trafficking organizations to launder and stash between $18 billion and $39 billion in wholesale proceeds each year.

Drug money leaving the country has repeatedly taken center stage, including in a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report that looked at shortcomings in the government's efforts to stem cross-border currency smuggling.

“Moving illegal proceeds across the border ... represents a significant threat to national security,” concludes the report, which had sensitive information redacted before public release.

In Red Dolly, full-time criminals used others to do their business, said Wendell Campbell, spokesman for the DEA's Houston Division.

“These people were family and friends,” he said. “Although they weren't trying to make a living laundering drug money, they were paid to do so and knew the money ... came from illegal sources.”

Launderers help weave portions of the proceeds through the nation's banking system. Though some use more sophisticated methods, such as real estate or offshore bank accounts, in this case the cash was deposited in banks in one city — where the drugs were sold — and withdrawn in another.

The deposit was always less than $10,000, the threshold that requires U.S. banks to report transactions.

The drugs in Red Dolly were stashed in ships and in rental vehicles.

For her part, Cuero, who lived and worked in Florida, deposited a total of $14,000 and was sentenced to a year in prison.

Ring leader Diego Arias, who lived in Houston and got 17 years in prison, disguised his drug-dealing ways by using a front business. He bought used cars at auctions and paid to fix them up to be resold.

He supposedly told at least some those recruited to launder money that he was traveling with a lot of cash and needed their help to temporarily put it in the bank to keep it safe.

Among those also busted was the ring leader's ex-wife, Isabel Martinez, and Cristian Acosta, who owned a Houston tire shop where federal agents secretly watched traffickers come and go.

They spent six months monitoring eight Houston phone lines, which produced more than 19,000 calls, according to court records.

Sylvia Longmire, a former military officer and California border security analyst who is a consultant, said those snared in Red Dolly appear to be a typical crew.

“Cartels are recruiting U.S. citizens and legal residents with clean records to perform other jobs for them in-country, and the biggest bonus is that they can leave and re-enter the U.S. without a fuss,” she said. “Colombian or Mexican criminals can't do that, so they need proxies in the U.S. to do their dirty work for them.”

Defendant Ramon Flores, who collected cash and moved drugs for the group, told a judge he was not raised to commit crimes, but was trying to get ahead financially for his family.

“I know there will be a second chance for me to get back on my feet and continue to live in a decent, honest and lawful way,” Flores said.

As is common in drug-conspiracy cases, nobody went to trial. All were convicted in plea deals that brought them leniency.

Carmen Garces, the house keeper, got probation instead of prison. She said she worked for years to legally reside in the United States and buy a small home.

“I am a single parent, and other than this situation, I have never broken the law,” she said. “I am so deeply sorry for the mistake.”