Justice Department steps up pressure on cartels' financial networks as launderers turn to crypto

WASHINGTON — 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.

If you cut off the money, you hurt the cartels, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” A. Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

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.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/business/justice-department/GQMGE35LFM6C5ATF62YB4GIU2Q/

>>24220332 @realDonaldTrump I have had very productive discussions with Prime Minister Keir Starmer about the Island of Diego Garcia.PN

He had no choice since his crimes are exposed. I bet Trump will try to get the other island Starmer gave away too!

>>24220335 Sen. Thom Tillis DOUBLES DOWN on opposing all of Trump’s nominees to the Fed Board until the Powell investigation is droppedPN

Have we researched what kind of favor or protection Powell gave Tillis. His Banking and Fed committee in Senate surely knows all the secrets and crimes of the Fed. Did Tillis get financial favors or strike secret deals for all the corruption Tillis is and was involved in? Did Powell cover for Tillis whatever he did.

I’m sure the FED buys off people, how do we research Tillis’s ghost corps. There was noice about his oddly structured corp that hides all the corruption on money stealing?

I would think the Trump Agencies are researching Tillis’s transactions.Why to hell is Tillis defending Powell

Bessent says it would be up to Trump whether to sue his Fed nominee over interest rates

By FATIMA HUSSEIN and CHRISTOPHER RUGABER

February 05, 2026 at 1:21 pm EST

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says it would be "up to the president" to decide whether or not to sue Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, if he fails to lower interest rates.

During remarks at a private black-tie dinner of the elite Alfalfa Club on Saturday night, Trump said he might sue his newly selected Fed chair nominee if he didn't lower interest rates. Asked about it later that night by reporters, Trump said the remarks were made in jest. "It's a roast," Trump said. "It was all comedy."

But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, pressed Bessent on Trump's remarks during a committee hearing on Wednesday, which come after the unprecedented attacks and legal investigation his administration has aimed at the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell.

Trump nominated Powell in 2017, but turned against him when he raised interest rates the following year.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell since returning to the White House last year and last month, Powell revealed that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed the Fed as part of an investigation into Powell's Senate testimony last June about the Fed's $2.5 billion building renovation.

The investigation has raised concerns among some Senate Republicans about the Trump administration's willingness to threaten the Fed's longtime independence from day-to-day politics. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is retiring at the end of this year, has said he won't vote to approve Warsh until the investigation into Powell is resolved. Without Tillis' support, Warsh's nomination could get held up in the committee.

At the hearing, Warren asked Bessent to commit that Warsh would not be sued or investigated by the Justice Department if he doesn’t cut interest rates.

“That is up to the president,” Bessent responded. The two began to argue over each other, as Bessent said the president was joking.

“That was supposed to be the softball!” Warren said in astonishment.

Also at the hearing, Tillis submitted a list of members of the committee who indicated they didn’t see criminal intent on the part of Powell.

“I was actually a witness at the alleged scene of the crime,” Tillis said during the hearing, and “we didn’t see a crime.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who leads the Senate Banking Committee, also broke ranks with the Trump administration and told Fox Business, “Ineptness or being incompetent is not a criminal act.”

It was the second consecutive day of hearings for Bessent about the annual report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

Bessent's first hearing with the House Financial Services Committee devolved into insults as Bessent clashed with Democratic lawmakers over fiscal policy, the business dealings of the Trump family and other issues.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/business/bessent-says-it/ZIAU6HID2Y5QBNCEWWEEOT5ZWI/

May 7, 2025 – The Hidden Empire of Thom Tillis: Undisclosed Deeds and Rental IncomeEntries by Katie WeddingtonMay 7, 2025

This is a corrected and expanded version of an article originally published at 1:08 PM on May 7, 2025. It includes critical factual updates and new findings resulting from an ongoing investigation. I am being fully transparent about an error I made at the outset of the investigation, how that error occurred, and how correcting it led to the discovery of something even more significant..

Building a Real Estate Empire, One Undisclosed Deed at a Time

The initial confusion was driven by a seemingly impossible coincidence: Senator Thom R. Tillis has a brother—also named Thom R. Tillis That detail, obscured in legal and corporate filings, made it appear that the Senator himself had engaged in a self-dealing real estate transaction. I originally believed the Senator had acquired 5508 Enslow Place through an LLC via $0 quitclaim deed and later sold it for profit without reporting the transaction in mandatory senate financial disclosures.

That turned out to be incorrect. But rather than invalidate the story, correcting it uncovered something even more bizarre—and far more troubling.

Senator Thomas Roland Tillis, a senior Republican from North Carolina and sitting member of powerful Senate committees on Banking, Finance, and the Judiciary, is tied to a network of real estate transactions involving his family members, an array of limited liability companies, and a nonprofit corporation registered to a luxury residential address. The result is a financial and legal ecosystem that appears to be engineered for opacity and protected by bespoke legislation and corrupt government oversight.

This report presents evidence that raises serious questions about Tillis’s conduct and financial transparency with regard to:

Verifiable property records linking Tillis family entities to concealed or underreported assets

Multiple examples of $0 property transfers between corporate and family-controlled interests

Omitted financial disclosures in violation of the Ethics in Government Act

Potential misuse of nonprofit resources and commingled addresses with real estate operations

These findings are based on public records filed with the IRS, North Carolina’s Secretary of State, the Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds, and other official, government-controlled property databases. The documents cited here are verifiable and evidence of obfuscation speaks for itself.

Correcting the Initial Claim Unmasked a Bigger Problem at 5508 Enslow Place

The most confounding example in this investigation remains 5508 Enslow Place. Initially, I reported that Senator Tillis personally acquired and sold this property. That claim was incorrect — in 2008, Thom “Rick” Tillis and his wife Terry quitclaimed the property to their family-controlled LLC, TRT Holdings.

Five years later, in 2013, TRT Holdings sold the property to Theresa L. Baker, a woman from Connecticut who had recently relocated to North Carolina. The sale price was $55,000, and the transaction was executed via a warranty deed — suggesting a conventional, arms-length sale on paper.

It was after the sale where the deeply suspicious activity began. Baker died just three years later in 2016, and as of 2025, her name remains on the deed. The mortgage was quietly maintained for seven years after her death and only satisfied in 2023, with no recorded transfer of ownership or probate proceeding — a pattern that raises far more questions than the sale itself. Theresa Baker may not have known much about real estate law or deed classifications. From her point of view, she was buying a modest home for a good price from a real estate company. On paper, the use of a warranty deed suggested a conventional, protected transaction — but the circumstances that followed raise the possibility that she was merely a placeholder in a much broader scheme.

Baker died of cancer in 2016, just three years later. As of 2025, her name is still on the deed. The mortgage, originally taken out in her name, continued to be paid for seven years after her death, and was satisfied only recently — in 2023. No deed has been filed transferring ownership, no probate appears to have been opened, and no heirs have claimed the property.

These facts are not just strange. They point to the deliberate retention of a property in a dead woman’s name, while the home continues to be financially maintained and legally obscured. One possible explanation is that this was a planned placeholder title, allowing the true controllers of the property to remain invisible.

https://www.clintonfoundationtimeline.com/may-7-2025-the-hidden-empire-of-thom-tillis-undisclosed-deeds-and-rental-income/

Just looked at Open Secrets and this article of correct for Tillis, now compare this article OS, serious corruption and now the Clinton angle