US authorities have charged Jesus Gabriel Rodriguez, Jr., owner-operator of the Florida-based armored transport company Transvalue, with facilitating a $140 million transnational illicit gold smuggling operation aimed at laundering illicitly-obtained cash.
Rodriguez facilitated both domestic and international armored transport of gold, cash and other valuables. Authorities suspect that between March 2015 to September 2016, Rodriguez helped import into the US thousands of kilograms of illegally-obtained gold from the Caribbean region island country of Curacao. His co-conspirators from Florida and Latin America were the buyers of the gold. They bought the gold for the US-based metals refinery NTR Metals and earned commissions based on the volume they procured.
NTR Metals had implemented strict AML policies. These included not buying gold from Curacao, a known source of illegally-obtained gold smuggled out of South America. Rodriguez helped co-conspirators by-pass this AML policy by concealing the origins of the gold, thereby getting it past US Customs.
Source: US Department of Justice