OAKLAND – The co-owner of an Oakland-based money services business has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for money laundering, according to prosecutors.
Related Articles
Man charged with carjacking woman in Fremont, using vehicle to run her over
Who is the Oakland city official allegedly placed in power through Mayor Sheng Thao’s ‘bribery deal’?
Oakland corruption probe: Here’s who the feds indicted
‘It was hard not to be happy around him’: Man killed in Oakland after gunman ordered him out of a car
Man gets 18 months in federal prison after changing computer passwords, data at East Bay company
Jose Luis Garcia, 57, of Oakland, pleaded guilty in September 2024 to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release Friday. His wife, Silvana Jorge de Oliveira, was also charged in the case.
Garcia co-owned a money services business on International Boulevard in Oakland that operated under several names, including Envios Express. As its anti-money laundering compliance officer, he was responsible for monitoring outgoing wires for structuring activity intended to circumvent reporting requirements, according to prosecutors.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Garcia admitted to using fake names and IDs to process multiple structured wires to conceal the fact that a single sender was wiring sums greater than $3,000, which he knew would have triggered reporting requirements.
Garcia accepted large amounts of cash from customers, who asked that the money be wired to well-known drug-trafficking areas of Mexico or to recipients in Honduras, without recording the true identity of the senders, according to prosecutors.
In August 2022, Garcia agreed to a request by a confidential source to wire $9,200 in cash to recipients in Mexico without providing an ID or using the sender’s real name as required by federal law, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Garcia transmitted the cash in four installments and charged an under-the-table fee of $50 for each wire.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. ordered Garcia to serve three years of supervised release, according to prosecutors.
