United States Attorney Donald J. Cazayoux, Jr. announced today that KATELYN & CLAIRE, INC. and ALEX T, INC., both doing business as Quality Express, pled guilty before United States District Court Chief Judge Brian A. Jackson to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and multiple counts of failure to file Currency Transaction Reports as part of a drug and money laundering investigation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. The corporations also agreed to forfeit to the United States $992,462.40, which were funds involved in the charged offenses.
Quality Express, which is located on Foster Drive in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offered check cashing, currency exchanges and money transfers. Between March 2010 and April 2011, an undercover agent, working at the direction of the DEA and IRS, provided more than $275,000 in United States currency to agents of Quality Express to be exchanged or transferred so that it could be more easily concealed and avoid detection by law enforcement. The money was represented to be drug proceeds. To further conceal the currency exchanges and transfers, Quality Express and its agents failed to file Currency Transaction Reports that would have reflected the receipt of United States Currency, on six separate occasions, in amounts ranging from $12,000 to $90,000. The defendants believed that the money was proceeds from drug trafficking.
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