Colombian man sentenced for his participation in money laundering conspiracy

Date: Aug. 1, 2024

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BOSTON - A Colombian man was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for is involvement in a money laundering conspiracy.

Jose Abril-Sequera was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns to 50 months in prison today after pleading guilty to money laundering charges. In April 2024, Abril-Sequera pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with participating in a money laundering conspiracy and conducting substantive money laundering transactions.

Beginning in 2016 and continuing until 2022, an investigation was conducted into a money laundering organization based primarily in Barranquilla, Colombia. An undercover investigator infiltrated the organization by portraying himself as an international money launderer, able to pick up bulk cash throughout the world, launder the proceeds through his United States based accounts, and send the money to Colombia through the Black Market Peso Exchange, a common method of trade based money laundering used to repatriate the proceeds of drug trafficking to Colombia.

Abril-Sequera was a business owner in Colombia who used his business bank account to receive drug proceeds in Colombia. During the course of the conspiracy, Abril-Sequera received over $250,000 million in wire transfers to his account. After receipt, Abril-Sequera withdrew the funds from his account to pay out the money in Colombia to the owners. Abril-Sequera also created fake invoices to mask the true source of the funds and evade anti-money laundering protocols. Abril-Sequera knew that the money involved was the proceeds of drug trafficking and freely discussed working with individuals dealing in hundreds of kilograms worth of drugs and the logistics of laundering the proceeds.

Acting United States Attorney Joshua R. Levy and Stephen Belleau, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, New England Field Division made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney's Jared C. Dolan and Alathea E. Porter prosecuted the case.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multiagency approach.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.