A Venezuelan businessman got a 27-month ticket to the slammer for washing more than $300,000 of drug money for a Colombian outfit, the Department of Justice announced yesterday.
Manuel Calderin Calderin, the money-managing mastermind of 40 years, pled guilty back in October 2023 to running a sophisticated scheme that made dirty money look squeaky clean through business accounts in his native land – hustling cash for narcos high up in the cocaine trade. Convicted by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns, Calderin Calderin not only faces prison time but also a one-year supervised release program.
These details spilled out after an undercover investigation that sang like a canary about the doings of a Barranquilla-based laundering gig since 2016. An intrepid investigator posed as a big-time money launderer, promising pickups of bulky cash piles worldwide, bundling them through U.S. banks, and shuttling funds back to Colombia via the notorious Black Market Peso Exchange – a notorious tool for cleaning drug dough, explained Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua R. Levy and DEA honcho Brian D. Boyle.
With his fingers in the pie of legitimate business ownership, Calderin Calderin played the front, using his firm's accounts to attract drug proceeds while crafting bogus invoices, helping cartels disguise their narco-dollars as mundane merchant proceeds – a tale of deceit painted in the dull hues of commerce, complemented by crafted fabrications.
The case was not just a strong arm of the law showing its reach; it signaled a broader combat strategy against kingpins threatening Uncle Sam's backyard. Calderin Calderin's conviction is part of the larger Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) mission, which takes a chessmaster's approach to dismantling crime syndicates through a coordinated, intelligence-driven strategy. While Calderin Calderin prepares to don the prison blues, the DOJ underscores that the accusations in the indictment are nothing but charges at this junction.
