A former high-level Drug Enforcement Agency agent was indicted on and federal charges of conspiring to traffic drugs and launder millions of dollars for a Mexican cartel.
Paul Campo, who was a DEA agent for nearly 25 years, and his associate Robert Sensi, are accused in a new indictment unsealed Friday of converting cash into cryptocurrency to buy 220 kilograms of cocaine, worth $5 million, and launder $750,000 in proceeds from drug sales for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG. The State Department designated CJNG as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year.
Campo pleaded not guilty to the charges Friday and was detained.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York allege the men agreed to launder at least $12 million for the cartel.
CNN has attempted to reach Campo, who doesn’t have a attorney identified in court records, for comment.
Authorities allege he and Sensi met with a confidential source working at the direction of US law enforcement posing as a member of the cartel. During a meeting in March at a restaurant in New York, according to the indictment, the men discussed how to move money from the US to Mexico, including by investing in real estate and smuggling cash in bulk.
Campo allegedly told the government source that he had other projects where he helped clients “get their money back,” according to the indictment. Campo allegedly flashed his DEA badge to the confidential source in the meeting, telling him he retired from the DEA years ago.
Campo rose to deputy chief of the DEA’s Office of Financial Operations, putting him in charge of the agency’s money laundering operations, according to his bio at Global Financial Consultants, a company he founded after leaving the agency. He retired from the DEA in 2016. A call and email to the company was not immediately returned Friday. Sensi could not immediately be reached.
