The brother of the alleged leader of a Mexican cocaine-trafficking cartel used Bank of America Corp. accounts to invest the organization’s drug proceeds in U.S. racehorses, an FBI agent said.
Jose Trevino-Morales, one of 14 people indicted June 12 by a federal grand jury in Texas, used a personal account and a business account under the name of Tremor Enterprises to buy and sell horses using money generated from cocaine trafficking, extortion and bribery, FBI special agent Jason Preece said in a June 11 statement filed in federal court in Dallas.
“The ultimate goal of this money-laundering operation was to provide Jose Trevino with apparent legitimate assets purchased and maintained by illegally obtained money,” Preece said. Bank of America isn’t accused of any wrongdoing in the agent’s statement.
Details of the transactions were revealed in a probe of the Los Zetas drug cartel, which according to the filing, funnels thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the U.S. each year.
“We have strong anti-money-laundering procedures and work closely with the authorities when suspicious activity is discovered,” Larry Di Rita, a spokesman at Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, said in a phone interview Monday.
The bank doesn’t comment on any specific legal and customer cases, he said.
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