The owner of La Popular, a chain of money transfer businesses in Oregon and Washington, laundered at least $18 million in drug proceeds from Honduran and Mexican drug traffickers, federal prosecutors allege.
Brenda Lili Barrera Orantes, 39, of Beaverton is listed as the owner of La Popular stores in Hillsboro, Beaverton, Canby, Woodburn, Odell and Vancouver and appeared Thursday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
The stores worked with other money service agents to send cash accepted from customers via wire to recipients across the country or internationally, according to a federal complaint.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Jarrett told U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman that Barrera Orantes’ business laundered about $18 million from January 2021 through April 2024.
Barrera Orantes charged a 10% fee for each transaction, leaving her with at least $1.8 million, Jarrett said.
During those four years, La Popular processed a total of $89 million in more than 178,000 cash transfers, according to the complaint.
Federal agents searched her Beaverton home with a warrant Wednesday and found $120,000 in cash in the bottom of a closet, bundled in $10,000 stacks, Jarrett said. They also searched La Popular stores in Beaverton, Hillsboro and Vancouver.
Honduran drug dealers over the last five years have been working with Mexican drug trafficking organizations in the Portland metro area and have been “instructed by their bosses to take proceeds” from their sales to local money service businesses, including La Popular, according to the complaint.
The dealers send the money to families in Honduras to conceal the trafficking, the complaint says.
La Popular broke down the cash into multiple wire transfers across its stores using false names and addresses for the senders to avoid record-keeping requirements, the complaint alleges.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Kara Sagi said Barrera Orantes should be eligible for release pending trial, but Sagi said she wasn’t ready to argue on Thursday.
Beckerman ordered Barrera Orantes to be held while awaiting a future detention hearing next week.
Jarrett had argued that Barrera Orantes presents a serious risk of not returning to court if released.
Barrera Orantes, originally from Guatemala, was ordered nearly a decade ago to voluntarily leave the country after overstaying her visa but did not, according to Jarrett.
La Popular appears to have been in business since 2020, the federal complaint said.
Investigators from Homeland Security Investigations, working with the Internal Revenue Service and Westside Interagency Narcotics team, initiated the investigation in 2021 based on tips from a confidential informant.
The agents had the informant speak with Barrera Orantes and provide her with $10,000 from purported drug sales, according to the complaint.
They met on Feb. 1, 2022, at the entrance to a Home Depot in Beaverton, where two undercover agents helped the informant with the money handoff, according to the complaint.
Barreras Orantes said she needed more than one recipient’s name to avoid suspicion, the complaint says.
She accepted the cash in the parking lot, and one of the undercover agents later texted her a bank account number for the wiring of the money, the complaint said.
La Popular’s Beaverton store then wired three deposits of $2,500 and a fourth for $1,928, with Barrera Orantes pocketing the remainder, according to the complaint.
When an undercover agent expressed concern about handing over cash in a public parking lot, Barrera Orantes suggested they meet for a meal for the next transaction, prosecutors and investigators said.
By September that year, the informant met with Barrera Orantes at the Vancouver store, handed her $15,000 in a back room, a list of names of recipients and $1,500 for her fees, the complaint says. The two then went out to eat, where the informant told her the money was from selling drugs, and Barrera Orantes later sent the informant receipts for eight wire transfers, according to prosecutors.
Investigators said several of the business practices raised red flags, including a heavy concentration of money transferred to “known drug source locations,” including Franciso Morazán Department in Honduras and Sinaloa, Jalisco and Michoacan in Mexico.
There were also multiple transfers of less than $1,000 sent in rapid succession or “bursts,” and a lack of apparent family ties between a sender and receiver, the complaint said.
“Money laundering allows drug traffickers to thrive in the shadows, and by severing their cash flow we are striking at the very thing that incentivizes their illicit pursuits,” said Matthew Murphy, special agent in charge of the Seattle office of Homeland Security Investigations. “By stopping those that try to conceal criminal profits, communities are protected from the violence, addiction, and instability caused by the drug trade.”
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