Can You Believe This $20,000 Cash Bond 80 Counts of Money Laundering &Financing Human Smugglers & Drug Deal?
A Scottsdale man who ran four Western Union stores in Phoenix and Mesa was indicted Tuesday on 80 counts of money laundering and other crimes that are suspected of financing human smugglers and drug dealers.
Attorney General Terry Goddard announced the indictment of Bruce Dennis Love, 50, who owns homes in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. Two other men suspected in the four-year-old, $56.8 million money-laundering scheme were also indicted. Their names have been withheld because they have not been served with the indictment, said Andrea Esquer, Goddard’s spokeswoman.
Vincent Picard, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix, which participated in the 23-month-long investigation, said the indictments shut down one of the “illegal support structures for human smugglers and drug traffickers. This investigation hit them where it hurts.”
This is how the scheme worked, investigators said.
Coyotes would bring illegal immigrants from Mexico into Phoenix. At coyotes’ directions, the immigrants’ family members would wire money to Love’s Western Union stores to pay the smugglers to take the immigrants to particular destinations.
Smugglers or their human cargo would go to Love’s stores to pick up the cash. Love received a Western Union fee on each transaction.
The indictment and court documents said Love ran his operation out of three locations in Phoenix and one in Mesa, which conducted Western Union and check-cashing services.
One of the stores was tucked into a small back room inside a Mexican butcher shop in west-central Phoenix.
Love was warned as early as 2004 by one of his store clerks that he would “get in trouble” for catering to his “coyote clientele,” according to a court document.
But Love told the clerk that the “coyotes were driving his (money-transfer) commissions” and he demanded that such wires be paid by his cashiers, the court record said.
Love courted the coyote trade because the high- volume business boosted his commissions, court records said.
According to court records, Love’s employees estimated that 80 to 100 percent of all Western Union transactions in his stores were intended to pay smugglers bringing illegal immigrants into the United States.
Love’s suspected money-laundering scheme was unraveled by the Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force, which includes ICE, the Phoenix Police Department, the Department of Public Safety and the Attorney General’s Office.
The indictment claims that Love and the two unidentified suspects violated state money-laundering laws by making false statements and reports, not filing suspicious-activity reports, and accepting false personal identification from people receiving the wired money.
Love, also indicted on charges of conspiracy, participating in a criminal syndicate, and other counts, was arrested Friday.
He was released on $20,000 cash bond and was ordered to surrender his passport.
He is expected to be arraigned in Maricopa County Superior Court at 8:30 a.m. next Wednesday.
If convicted, Love could face up to 100 years in prison terms if served consecutively or 23 years if served concurrently.
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