US Undercover Agent Exposed — Million Dollar Laundering
Robert Mazur’s Duo Life
Robert Mazur, who spent two years of his life undercover and laundered tons of million dollars for Pablo Escobar cartel is not as familiar among people compared to Escobar, but holds significant insight in the niche of money laundering.
Cartels actually help in corruption around the world. This whole mechanism works to control countries and their presidents.
Operation C chase was a multi-agency task force to prosecute the biggest money launderers of the Medellin cartel. Most of the people who were involved in this deal were drug traffickers who were having hundreds of millions of dollars.
Then two agencies and one intelligence agency informed that the Medellin cartel issued a contract on his life.
The Undercover Persona ‘Robert Musella’
Robert spent almost one and half year and had a super sophisticated lifestyle during his undercover and named himself ‘Robert Musella’.
He was embedded in real businesses, had private air charter service with a luxurious private jet.
There were 30 locations on the east coast with a jewelry chain and a big amount of cash going through the diamond district which served the purpose of a very good excuse for where the cash is coming from.
He was embedded in investment company, a mortgage-brokerage business firm which was having a seat in new york stock exchange and then his partner begin two year infiltration of the medellin cartel and the banks were supporting them.
Meeting the Medellin Cartel
The first person he met in the Medellin cartel was named as Gonzalo mora, was a small time money launderer and had an import export business.
Robert had a partner whose name was Emir dealt with him and simply said:
‘My boss handles all of this business but never wants to meet you’.
He wants to stay in the shadows but if you ever could convince him then you will be able to launder untold amounts of money and in 6 months he was able to surpass the criteria.
Later on, Robbert convinced him to let him introduce the big guns of this game and then the real game started.
The Money Maze
So now he was receiving dollars from the drug traffickers and faced the demand for dollars from importers.
Both of the parties were majorly dealing in Colombian pesos. Bank accounts were controlled by Panama and then the money got supplied all over the world.
Some money was exported to columbia by the help of aircraft and trucks to make payoffs of military or politicians
The money would be first deposited into a certificate of deposit in Luxembourg, the name of an offshore entity. That money was used by the bank as the loan in different parts of the world.
For instance: If the loan was in paris and then to Gibraltar corporation and then Gibraltar would send the funds to Panama and then from there accounts controlled by the drug traffickers who were based in Columbia.
So the basis of doing that exercise was to confuse the route and obscure the origin of money which was simply a suitcase. There was also little gangs of army who used to do the same called smurfs.
Pablo Escobar and Members Of The Medellin Cartel
In Paris, Robert got to meet Pablo Escobar’s lawyer named Santiago Uribe and other people.
They assessed the pattern of doing the deed and made an agreement to receive 100$ million dollars which was supposed to put in the nest egg in Europe in case they had to flee.
When he came back from Europe, he happened to receive small chunks of total amounts.
He alerted his surveillance team because there was counter surveillance from the escobar team and eventually the surveillance got burned and Emir received a call from Ganzalo Mora.
In the background there was a screaming voice of the main manager of Escobar who was screaming that Robert had to be a DEA undercover agent because they saw all of the feds there.
Dirty Deals in the Shadows
Then he dealt with dirty bankers and lawyers who were involved in this act in Switzerland. They formed a corporation to hide the source of funds.
He also dealt with attorneys of Panama and other people from the financial sector who used to do nothing other than laundering.
The actual plot was to provide a nominee director to hide the beneficial ownership of accounts and control of corporations.
There were other people who were using lead covered with gold in and out of US and that was their cover why they are depositing cash
Operation C-Chase Takedown
After 2 years, in the first week of October 1988 the operation was taken down. So many times, it resulted in indictments but bad guys do not offer extradition, especially Columbia. Then someone suggested why don’t they have any personal event? So they planned a bachelor party in Innisbrook which is a country club. Children of future defendants, wives were part of the events too.
And here comes the real twist when the arrest team came to arrest them and everyone was shocked. 85 people were arrested and almost 600$ were collected and seizure of worth 300$ of cocaine was collected.
The longest trial lasted for 6 months which consisted of significant prison sentences, and hefty fines for drug lords and corrupt bankers. This undercover work provided critical insights into the methods used by drug cartels to launder money and highlighted the complexities of AML efforts and the necessity of international cooperation in combating financial crimes.
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