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A 45-year-old Los Angeles man was charged in a $50 million scheme to launder Mexican cartel money

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The white gift bag with a cheery “Happy Birthday” printed on the side didn’t have a present in it. It had $226,000 in cash that the Sinaloa drug cartel needed laundered, authorities allege.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a multi-count indictment that charged more than a dozen Los Angeles members of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel and Chinese currency brokers with conspiring to launder drug money for years. The lead defendant, Edgar Joel Martinez-Reyes, 45, is a resident of East Los Angeles. The investigation so far has yielded $5 million in cash, more than 300 pounds of cocaine, 92 pounds of methamphetamine, 3,000 pills of Ecstasy, and 44 pounds of magic mushrooms. According to the indictment, the list of defendants includes Peiji “Dr. P” Tong, Sai “Tommy” Zhang, Chengwu “Ocean” He, Raul “Batman” Contreras, Jiaxuan “Edward” He, Diego Acosta Ovalle, and others.

The first 20 defendants will be arraigned in the next few weeks and if convicted on all charges, each faces a minimum of 10 years in prison or a maximum penalty of life in prison.

“Relentless greed, the pursuit of money, is what drives the Mexican drug cartels that are responsible for the worst drug crisis in American history,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in a statement. “This DEA investigation uncovered a partnership between Sinaloa Cartel associates and a Chinese criminal syndicate operating in Los Angeles and China to launder drug money.”

The DOJ said the cartel, based in the Sinaloa state of Mexico, has been behind the surging infusion of fentanyl in the U.S. in the past eight years, which drums up hordes of cash. In order to get the money to Mexico, cartel members turned to Chinese money exchanges in the U.S., authorities said.  To set it up, Martinez-Reyes and “Dr. P” Tong allegedly went to Mexico roughly four years ago to sign contracts to launder the cartel’s drug profits in exchange for a commission fee.

After the agreement was made, drug dealers laden with cash delivered it to currency brokers for laundering purposes. To disguise the cash, the defendants used gift bags, reusable shopping sacks, backpacks, a box of Fruity Pebbles, and other items to conceal the money, authorities said.

Prosecutors said the couriers bought crypto, or deposited the money into bank accounts in small, structured doses. The indictment states that the cryptocurrency could easily be transferred to accounts held by the Sinaloa Cartel. Other methods of laundering the gains included buying precious metal and gems and taking them to Mexico for sale.

The indictment outlines a complex scheme involving Chinese money exchanges. The currency exchanges that work with the cartels also assist rich Chinese nationals who invest in China and want to transfer their money to the U.S. but are barred by the Chinese government, the DOJ said. Rules in China prohibit people from moving more than $50,000 per year out of the country.

To get around the restrictions, Chinese residents tap brokers who sell U.S. dollars, authorities said. The brokers give the China-based residents bank account details in China with instructions to deposit Chinese currency into an account. Once the account holder confirms the deposit, an equivalent amount of U.S. dollars is given to the U.S. broker. The brokers take cash from the cartels and charge a percentage-based commission fee of about 0.5% to 2% of the total amount to disguise the drug money. (Traditional money launderers charge much higher rates than the Chinese launderers, authorities said, ranging from 5% to 10% or more.)

“Drug traffickers increasingly have partnered with Chinese underground money exchanges to take advantage of the large demand for U.S. dollars from Chinese nationals,” said the DOJ.

The brokers either delivered the U.S. dollars directly to customers or bought property, luxury goods, and cars that they shipped to China, the indictment states. Money transferred in China was used to buy items for businesses in Mexico like consumer goods or chemicals used to make more narcotics, authorities said.

“This case is a prime example of Chinese money launderers working hand in hand with drug traffickers to try to legitimize profits generated by drug activities,” said Guy Ficco, chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation.

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UK polls point to a big Labour win. The party fears voter complacency

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Labour leader Keir Starmer poses for photos as he visits the Vale Inn on June 27, 2024 in Macclesfield, United Kingdom. In the final week of campaigning, Labour outlined its plans to expand opportunities for young people. 

Cameron Smith | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON — There’s been one main narrative since the U.K.’s Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election back in May — that the opposing Labour Party would win the vote with a landslide.

While voter polls may have differed in scale and methodology, the results have pointed in one direction, showing that the center-left Labour Party has around a 20-point lead on the Conservatives. Labour is on track to win around 40% of the vote while roughly 20% of the support is projected to go to the Tories, according to a Sky News poll tracker.

Reform UK, led by arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage, is seen with 16% of the vote, after eating away at Tory support, while the Liberal Democrats are seen gaining around 11% and the Greens with 6%. The Scottish National Party is predicted to win 2.9% of the vote.

Labour candidates and leader Keir Starmer have been keen to play down the level of support that the party enjoys, fearing voter complacency and the appearance of “having it in the bag” — a stance that could prompt voter apathy and a lower turnout of supporters at the polls, or a backlash from Conservative-inclined sections of the electorate.

“The Labour Party wants to be able to be convince voters that it’s absolutely central that they turn out and vote, because otherwise the Tories will win, and the Tories are desperate for people to think that they have still got a chance, and therefore it’s worth turning up,” Britain’s top polling expert John Curtice told CNBC.

Question marks have risen in the past over the accuracy of British voter polls, with previous projections over or underestimating support for various political parties. The errors have often come about because of inadequate sampling or of factors that are harder to control, such as voters being “shy” when polled on which party they intended to support.

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks ahead of the U.K.’s general election on July 4, 2024. 

Anthony Devlin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

This year, however, experts tend to agree that the polls show such a swing to Labour that, even if the scale of support were wrong, the overall result would be the same: a convincing win for the opposition party.

“My attitude is [that] a poll should be taken but not inhaled,” Curtice said wryly. “The point is, you shouldn’t be looking at them to provide you with pinpoint accuracy, they should give you a reasonable indication of the direction of travel.”

“It just so happens that because this is an election in which apparently one party is so far ahead, much as [it was] in 1997, the polls could be quite a bit out — but nobody will notice,” he noted, referencing the year when the Labour Party won a landslide against the Conservatives, ending the latter party’s then 18-year rule.

Labour ‘spin’?

The Labour Party itself is understandably keen to downplay the polls, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that the party doesn’t comment on projections, “as they vary and fluctuate.”

“Instead, we’re working hard to take our message of change to voters ahead of the only poll that matters, on 4 July,” the spokesperson stated.

On Monday, Keir Starmer said no vote should be taken for granted, asking his supporters to continue campaigning until polls closed on Thursday.

“The fight for change is for you, but change will only happen if you vote for it. That is the message we have to take to every doorstep these last few hours and days until 10 o’clock on Thursday night.”

“Nothing must be taken for granted, every vote has to be earned. The polls don’t predict the future, we have to get out there,” he told campaign supporters in Hitchin.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to Hitchin, Hertfordshire, while on the General Election campaign trail. Picture date: Monday July 1, 2024. 

Stefan Rousseau – Pa Images | Pa Images | Getty Images

Labour’s former campaign and communications directors, Alastair Campbell, one of the chief strategists behind the rebranding of the party in the 1990s as ‘New Labour’ ahead of its monumental election win in 1997, told CNBC that he doubts current voter polls.

“I get really worried about about the way that these election debates are now unfolding, virtually everything in the debate at the moment is about these opinion polls,” he told CNBC two weeks ago.

“Apart from a few postal votes, nobody’s voted yet. And I just do not for one second believe that the Conservatives are going to get virtually wiped out, I just don’t believe it,” he said.

“I just think there’s something going very, very wrong with these polls, I could be completely wrong, and it’s true that Labour have been consistently ahead. But I just wish that, in our election periods, we would talk less about polls and more about what the parties are saying.”

'Something's going very wrong': Alastair Campbell casts doubt on UK opinion polls

Polling expert Matt Beech, director of the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull, said Campbell’s position was designed to persuade Labour-inclined voters to cast their ballots.

“They want to make sure that they get as big a majority as possible. They’re all very much aware of [the lead-up to the election in] 1992 with the phenomenon of ‘shy Tories,’ when the polls said Labour would win and they didn’t …. [But] they’re not actually that genuinely worried about that. What they want to have a 1997-like landslide tsunami,” Beech told CNBC.

He added, “So if you keep banging on that drum [that the polls are not correct], you’re going to say to Labour-inclined voters, ‘please go out and vote.’ But it’s not that ‘we’re actually scared we’re not going to win, we are going to win comfortably. But we want a majority that enables us to push our agenda and we want this win to mean that we’re there for two terms.’



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Ad-supported Murdoch Netflix rival to launch in the UK

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Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation is entering the UK’s highly competitive free, ad-supported video streaming market.

Tubi will compete with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, ITVX, Channel 4’s streaming platform as well as the BBC iPlayer.

The platform has been quickly gaining market share in the US where, according to Fox, it has almost 80 million monthly active users.

In the UK, Tubi says it will offer more than 20,000 films and TV series, including content from Disney, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The platform will also include a selection of British, Indian and Nigerian content.

UK viewers will be able to access content on the Tubi webpage and via a smartphone app.

Fox Corporation bought Tubi in 2020 for $440m (£348m) as the US media giant looked to attract younger audiences.

In recent years, streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ have launched ad-supported services and raised subscription prices as they tried to boost revenues.

The moves came as they faced pressure to spend more money to grow their libraries of content as they try to attract more customers in an increasingly competitive market.

In March, Mr Murdoch’s TalkTV network announced that it would stop broadcasting as a terrestrial television channel and became a strictly online service.

The network launched in 2022 but struggled to attract viewers on its linear platform.

Mr Murdoch had hoped the network would shake up the broadcasting establishment by offering an opinion-led alternative to established outlets.

The media tycoon played a pivotal role in the development of the UK’s broadcasting industry by launching Sky in 1984.

Some commentators saw TalkTV as an attempt by Mr Murdoch to recreate his success with Sky.

Mr Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox sold its 39% stake in Sky to NBCUniversal’s owner Comcast in 2018 after losing a battle for control of the network.



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Biden knocks Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity By Reuters

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By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday criticized the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that was seen as a win for his rival, former President Donald Trump, in forceful remarks from the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court found on Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for any actions that were within his constitutional powers as president, but can be for private acts, in a landmark ruling recognizing for the first time any form of presidential immunity from prosecution.

“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America,” Biden said, adding that no one is above the law. With the Supreme Court decision, he said, “That fundamentally changed.”

Biden is running for re-election against Trump and has been sharply critical of his rival’s actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, raid on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters, who believed Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 election.

© Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks during the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center Grand Opening Ceremony at the Stonewall Inn to mark the 55th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, New York, U.S., June 28, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Biden, 81, was making his first set of remarks at the White House since his shaky debate against Trump last week led to calls for him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer for the election.

After he stumbled over his words on the Atlanta debate stage, his remarks and comportment will be scrutinized for signs that he is up to the job of running for re-election and of governing the country for four more years.





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