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Justice Department steps up pressure on cartels’ financial networks
Legal Interview |
2026/02/03 15:26
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The Justice Department is taking direct aim at the financial lifelines of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels, targeting money brokers who prosecutors say have adapted to intensified enforcement by increasingly routing drug profits through cryptocurrency from American cities to cartel leaders in Mexico.
The cases of four defendants recently sent from Mexico to the U.S. for prosecution provide a glimpse into shadowy money laundering networks that allow the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and other violent groups to continue pumping dangerous drugs into American communities. The prosecutions underscore the Justice Department’s efforts to turn up the pressure on cartels and stay ahead of their sophisticated and ever-evolving tactics to launder money across the border without detection.
By targeting alleged money brokers — rather than street-level traffickers — prosecutors say they are aiming at a choke point they believe is essential to the cartels sustaining their operations as law enforcement pressure mounts on more visible drug routes.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second administration, the Mexican government has turned over more than 90 high-level defendants with ties to cartels in three transfers now at the center of a legal debate in Mexico. The defendants were wanted by U.S. prosecutors for crimes including drug trafficking, human smuggling and money laundering.
Senior Justice Department officials say bringing cartel figures to the United States is designed to do more than be a deterrent message. It could also lead to indictments against other high-level leaders if defendants cooperate, allowing prosecutors to reach higher into cartel leadership. Under Trump’s Republican administration, the Justice Department has restructured the Criminal Division to integrate narcotics prosecutors with anti-money laundering experts to better target cartels and to reflect a broader shift toward targeting the financial systems that sustain their operations.
The latest transfers to the U.S. include alleged Mexico-based money brokers, who authorities say oversee the movement of drug proceeds and pocket a percentage of the money that returns to the cartels as a commission, according to court papers. The brokers arrange for cash to be picked up in cities across the U.S. and conceal the money to get it across the border, often through digital assets as law enforcement has cut off other methods.
Prosecutors “want to hear on the distribution side how it works, who is involved, and seek additional indictments, and on the money laundering side, exactly the methods that they are using to get the money out of the United States through the U.S. banks,” Duva said. “There’s bulk cash smuggling that has been going on since the beginning of time, and then also sort of the newer trend of taking the cash, buying cryptocurrency, and then trading that cryptocurrency.”
Eduardo Rigoberto Velasco Calderon, Eliomar Segura Torres, Manuel Ignacio Correa and Cesar Linares-Orozco face money laundering conspiracy charges in indictments filed in Kentucky’s federal court. An attorney for Linares-Orozco declined to comment in an email to the AP, and no attorneys were listed in court papers for the other defendants.
The January transfer of 37 defendants from Mexico to the U.S. marked the third of its kind under Trump’s second term. Observers have described the transfers as an offering by Mexican authorities to offset mounting threats by Trump to take military action against cartels.
A group of lawyers and family members of cartel figures have accused Mexico of breaking the law by sending them without an extradition order. Mexico’s government has maintained the transfers were legal, carried out in the name of national security.
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Investigation is opened into managers of Swiss bar where fire killed 40
Legal Interview |
2026/01/12 08:41
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Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year’s party left 40 people dead, authorities said Saturday.
The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, the Valais region’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, told reporters. She said the investigation was opened on Friday night and that it would help “explore all the leads.” The announcement of the investigation did not name the managers.
More than 100 other people were injured in the blaze that broke out around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday at Le Constellation bar in the Alpine resort town of Crans-Montana. Police have said many were in their teens to mid-20s.
The process of identifying the dead and injured continued on Saturday, leading to an agonizing wait for relatives.
Investigators said Friday they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar.
Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. Officials said they also would look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes.
The Valais region’s top security official, Stéphane Ganzer, told SRF public radio Saturday that “such a huge accident with a fire in Switzerland means that something didn’t work — maybe the material, maybe the organization on the spot.” He added: “Something didn’t work and someone made a mistake, I am sure of that.”
Nicolas Féraud, who heads the Crans-Montana municipality, told RTS radio he was “convinced” checks on the bar hadn’t been lax, the broadcaster reported.
Asked whether the tragedy could have been avoided, Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans replied that officials could not yet answer and “we know that the world needs an answer on this question.”
The severity of burns has made it difficult to identify the dead and injured, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside were turned to ash.
On Saturday, regional police said the bodies of four victims — a boy and a girl, both 16, an 18-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, all of them Swiss — had been identified and handed over to their families.
Several injured people still haven’t been identified.
Laetitia Brodard, whose 16-year-old son, Arthur, went to Le Constellation to celebrate the New Year, held out hope that he might be one of them.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Brodard told reporters Friday evening. “I want to know where my child is and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
On Saturday, she told French broadcaster BFM TV that “we, parents, are starting to get tired ... and anger is starting to rise.”
“It’s a wait that destroys people’s stability,” said Elvira Venturella, an Italian psychologist working with the families. “And the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to accept the uncertainty, not having information.”
Swiss officials said Friday that 119 people were injured and 113 had been formally identified.
On Saturday, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told reporters he had just been briefed by local authorities that the number of injured stood at 121, with five not yet identified. He said 14 Italians were being treated in hospitals.
Cornado acknowledged “a lot of stress,” but said it was right for authorities to share information only when it is “accurate and 100% sure.”
Ganzer, visiting the site along with Jans, called the families’ wait “unbearable,” and said officials’ top priority was providing them the “legitimate answers they are waiting for.”
Swiss police have said the injured included more than 70 Swiss nationals and over 10 each from France and Italy, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland.
Mourners and well-wishers bearing flowers flowed to makeshift memorials outside Le Constellation, some consoling one another with hugs as they shed tears. “RIP you are all our children” one handwritten note said.
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Supreme Court hears Alabama appeal to execute intellectually disabled man
Legal Interview |
2025/12/06 21:51
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The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could make it harder for convicted murderers to show their lives should be spared because they are intellectually disabled.
The justices are taking up an appeal from Alabama, which wants to put to death a man who lower federal courts found is intellectually disabled and shielded from execution.
The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002.
Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.
The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.
The Supreme Court has held in cases in 2014 and 2017 that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.
Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled that Smith is intellectually disabled. The justices had previously sent his case back to the federal appeals court in Atlanta, where the judges affirmed that they had taken a “holistic” approach to Smith’s case, seemingly in line with the high court ruling.
But the justices said in June they would take a new look at the case.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Smith hasn’t met his burden of showing an IQ of 70 or below, and the state wrote in its brief that the discussion of a holistic approach is an unjustified expansion of the Supreme Court rulings.
“He has multiple scores in the 70s,” Marshall said in a phone interview. He said the question is about how to address a continuum of scores. “I don’t think picking and choosing those at the bottom are the way that the court will ultimately go,” Marshall said.
President Donald Trump’s administration and 20 states are supporting Alabama in the case. Smith “did not meet his burden of proving his IQ was likely 70 or below,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on behalf of the Republican administration.
Smith’s lawyers argue the lower courts followed the law in conducting a “holistic assessment of all relevant evidence” in a case with borderline IQ scores.
Rights groups focused on disabilities wrote in a brief supporting Smith that “intellectual disability diagnoses based solely on IQ test scores are faulty and invalid.”
Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the beating death of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. Van Dam was found dead in his pickup truck. Prosecutors said he had been beaten to death with a hammer and robbed of $150, his boots and tools.
A federal judge in 2021 vacated Smith’s death sentence, though she acknowledged “this is a close case.”
Alabama law defines intellectual disability as an IQ of 70 or below, along with significant or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior and the onset of those issues before the age of 18.
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Republican US Rep. Elise Stefanik is running for governor of New York
Legal Interview |
2025/11/01 08:50
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U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a close Republican ally of President Donald Trump, announced Friday that she’s running for governor of New York, a place she depicted in a campaign launch video as being “in ashes” because of lawlessness and a high cost of living.
In her video, a narrator declares “The Empire State has fallen” as it painted a grim picture of crime and economic crisis in New York City, though her message appeared to be aimed at other, more conservative parts of the state that she will need to win over next year.
“Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery prices crushing hardworking families,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Stefanik, who represents a conservative congressional district in upstate New York, has for months teased a run, leveling heavy criticism at incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul and more recently toward Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City.
Last year, Trump picked Stefanik to be the administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, but later rescinded the nomination over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.
Though any Republican faces long odds of winning the governor’s mansion in New York, Stefanik’s campaign will bring solid name recognition, fundraising prowess and deep ties to the White House. Her campaign announced Friday that she has received the backing of nearly three-quarters of the state’s county Republican chairs.
In a statement, Hochul campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika called Stefanik “Donald Trump’s number one cheerleader in Congress.”
“Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers in Congress wasn’t enough — now she’s trying to bring Trump’s chaos and skyrocketing costs to our state,” Chitika said.
The Republican primary field remains unclear ahead of the 2026 race. U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler had been contemplating a run and was considered a potentially strong candidate, but said earlier this year that he would instead seek reelection in his battleground House district in the New York Hudson Valley.
Hochul faces a contested primary, with her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, running against her.
Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, was 30 when she was first elected to the House in 2014. She entered Congress as a moderate Republican but soon attached herself to Trump, reshaping her persona into more of a brash, outspoken MAGA disciple.
Her national profile got a big boost after she aggressively questioned a group of university presidents over antisemitism on their campuses, leading to two of their resignations and winning praise from the Republican president.
Democrats have a major voter registration edge in New York. The last Republican governor in the state was former Gov. George Pataki, who left office about two decades ago. Still, Republican Lee Zeldin, a former Long Island congressman and current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, made a serious run for the office in 2022, coming within striking distance of upsetting Hochul. |
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Mexico soccer star Omar Bravo arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse
Legal Interview |
2025/10/06 20:36
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Mexican authorities said they arrested former soccer player Omar Bravo, 45, on suspicion of child sexual abuse.
The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that investigations indicate Bravo allegedly abused a teenage girl on several occasions in recent months and may have committed similar acts before.
He was arrested during an operation in the municipality of Zapopan and was expected to appear in court soon.
Bravo rose to fame playing as a forward for Chivas de Guadalajara, where he became the club’s all-time leading goal scorer. He also played for Mexico’s national team in the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
The Associated Press could not immediately reach a lawyer for Bravo.
On Bravo’s Instagram account, fans commented on his latest post from Sept. 8, which made no reference to the accusations. Some expressed sadness, while others said he was their idol and hoped the allegations were not true.
The prosecutor’s office said it will continue its investigation.
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