Oakland money transfer owner sentenced to prison for money laundering

The co-owner of an Oakland money transfer business has been ordered to spend a year in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.   

Jose Luis Garcia, 57, the co-owner of Envios Express on International Boulevard, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr,. according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for Northern California.   

Garcia was the local agent for national wire service companies that transferred money from Oakland to other parts of the U.S., known drug trafficking areas of Mexico or to people in Honduras and other countries, prosecutors said Friday in a press release.   

Garcia admitted using fake sender names and IDs to divide large sums into multiple transactions to conceal the fact that a single sender was wiring amounts over $3,000 that would have to be reported, prosecutors said.     

In August 2022, Garcia agreed to wire $9,200 in cash to Mexico without providing an ID or using the sender's real name. Garcia split the cash into four wires, using fake names for the sender on the receipts, and charged an under-the-table fee of $50 for each, prosecutors said.   

Garcia also misused the names and IDs of legitimate customers to send large amounts of cash for unidentified customers in order to evade reporting requirements, prosecutors said.     

He kept about 15,000 digital images of California driver's licenses and Honduran, Mexican, and other national identity cards which he used to meet the wire companies' ID requirements, according to prosecutors.   

Crime and Public SafetyOaklandMoney