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 News from Around the Americas | January 2008 
Seized Cash Likely Drug-Related
 Daniel Borunda - El Paso Times
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| | Above is nearly $1 million in cash that El Paso County sheriff's deputies - with the help of a drug-sniffing dog - recently found in a tractor-trailer. (El Paso County Sheriff's Office) | | |
The recent discovery of nearly $1 million in cash hidden in an 18-wheeler could be part of a trail of bulk money shipments that pass through El Paso on their way to drug traffickers in Mexico, authorities said.
"It's a regular thing for drugs to come in, and there is no reason not to believe it (money) is not heading south," said Matthew Taylor, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in El Paso.
On Jan. 18, an El Paso County sheriff's deputy stopped a tractor-trailer for weaving in and out of traffic on Interstate 10 and eventually led a drug-sniffing dog to wrapped bundles containing nearly $1 million in cash in the rig, sheriff's officials said.
The incident was one of the largest cash seizures by deputies in El Paso in recent years. Few other details were released because the case remains under investigation by the sheriff's Special Operations Division, sheriff's spokesman Deputy Jesse Tovar said.
The amount of drug money passing through El Paso is difficult to gauge because of the shadowy nature of the narco-businesses, law enforcement officials said. The shipments are proceeds from illegal drug operations in cities as far away as Chicago and New York.
Recently, Mexican drug-trafficking rings - bolstered by the ice methamphetamine market - have expanded across the U.S., according to the National Drug Threat Assessment 2007 report.
Eventually, the profits of drug sales flow into the coffers of drug traffickers in Mexico, often via El Paso.
"Narcotics heading north. The money has to go back south. It's a two-way street," said Taylor of the DEA.
Last year, Mexican authorities, working with the DEA, seized $207 million in cash stacked in a home in Mexico City allegedly linked to the chemical brokers supplying drug cartels. It was the largest single drug cash seizure in history, the DEA said.
In 2005, Tennessee narcotics officers found $1.5 million hidden in the floorboards of a BMW headed south from New York to El Paso, El Paso Times archives showed.
The million-dollar seizures are small compared with the estimated $8.5 billion in yearly in marijuana exports alone by Mexican drug traffickers, according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"One of our initiatives of the DEA is to get the proceeds," Taylor said. "We are not just looking at narcotics."
Daniel Borunda may be reached at dborunda(at)elpasotimes.com. |
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