Money Laundering Scandal Erupts in Florida Police Department

Recently, FBI Agents and the Miami-Herald uncovered that the Bal Harbour Police Department and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office had been setting up vast money laundering schemes. The Bal Harbour Police department were going after illegal international drug dealers and while making millions of dollars.

What was in it for the cops? The “cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns.”  Simultaneously, “the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.”

The Miami Herald wrote that after weeks of “delivering drug money to Miami storefront businesses, a new deal unfolded thousands of miles away in a country where the war on drugs had shifted: Venezuela”. Rather than obtaining help from federal agents and reporting their knowledge of Sanchez, the officers from the small community embarked on a series of laundering arrangements , illegally taking their cut and aiding Sanchez in his conspiracy full of political corruption.

William Amaro, top political aide to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Source: The Miami Herald
William Amaro, top political aide to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Source: The Miami Herald

“In Florida, the sunshine state, [money laundering] can be a dangerous source of income regardless of its location, ” said Krystal Lloyd, a senior at Whitman who lived in South Florida for fifteen years. “Money laundering, even by cops, results in prison if caught in Florida.”

According to The Miami Herald, this money laundering scheme, that had been going on since nearly 2010, never actually came to be revealed to the federal government until recently. Such actions completely violated the strict federal restrictions on sending illegal money overseas. These Florida cops had never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.

Banesco Tower in Panama, a key cog in the shipment of drug money to Venezuela.
Banesco Tower in Panama, a key cog in the shipment of drug money to Venezuela.

Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and previous Drug Enforcement Administration agent wrote that these officers were “like bank robbers with badges” who “had no law enforcement objective” except that “the objective was to make money.”

What proof did federal agents have against the BHPD? According to The Orlando Sentinel, the Miami Herald had examined hundreds of confidential records, emails, bank records and Venezuelan passports of the Bal Harbour task force and found at least 20 people from the South American country who were sent drug money.

“Aren’t the police supposed to be protecting us? [They] are literally stealing from the people who they are supposed to protecting from the same crime,” said Megan Neuman, a Whitman freshman. 

What do you believe should be the consequence of such illegal activity? Share your thoughts.