Suburban Charlotte banks used in major international drug money laundering scheme
Two men from China and one from California pleaded guilty this week in Charlotte’s federal court to using suburban Charlotte banks to launder drug trafficking money as part of a $92 million scheme.
Maoxuan Xia, a 29-year-old from China, was “personally responsible for laundering more than $30 million” of those funds in less than two years, according to a news release from the Department of Justice. He and two other men involved in the Chinese money laundering organization deposited more than $700,000 into Charlotte area banks, according to court documents.
The trio told investigators they knew the operation to be a $30 million- to $40-million operation, according to court documents. In the news release, federal prosecutors say they were a part of an organization that laundered more than $92 million laundered by the organization.
All three pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina Wednesday. None have been sentenced.
Court documents do not specify what kind of drugs the scheme trafficked, referring to the substances only as “narcotics.”
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, people working for Chinese money laundering organizations pick up bulk cash made from selling illegal drugs and move those funds abroad, often to Mexico. The scheme increasingly involves cartels wanting to launder funds. The operations violate federal money laundering and drug trafficking laws and currency controls.
Court documents show that the three men used shell companies and several bank accounts to launder the money.
Xia deposited more than $300,000 in drug-trafficking money into a Bank of America outside Carolina Place mall on Pineville-Matthews Road, using a fake New York driver’s license to deposit the money into one of several shell companies operated in the scheme.
Xia’s codefendants, Zhou Yu, 42, of China, and Shao Neng Lin, 58, of Baldwin Park, California, similarly deposited money at a Huntersville Chase Bank on Lindholm Drive.
