Jose Luis Garcia, co-owner of Envios Express, a money transmitting business in Oakland, has been sentenced to 12 months in federal prison. The sentence was issued by United States District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. on January 15, 2025.
Garcia, aged 57 and a resident of Oakland, was indicted in July 2023 and pleaded guilty in September 2024 to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h).
Court documents and Garcia's plea agreement reveal that he and his wife operated a money transmitting business on International Boulevard in Oakland under various names, including Envios Express. The business functioned as a local agent for national wire service companies, facilitating fund transfers from Oakland to other parts of the United States and abroad.
Despite completing annual Anti-Money Laundering training through these wire services and serving as the compliance officer for Envios Express, Garcia admitted to using fake sender names and IDs to process structured wires that concealed transactions exceeding $3,000. This activity aimed to evade mandatory federal reporting requirements. He accepted large cash amounts from unidentified customers who requested transfers to known drug trafficking areas without recording true sender identities.
In August 2022, Garcia agreed to transfer $9,200 in cash for a confidential source without providing an ID or using the real sender's name as required by federal law. He structured this amount into four separate wires with false sender names on receipts and charged an additional fee of $50 per wire.
Besides the prison term, Judge Gilliam also ordered Garcia to serve three years of supervised release.
The announcement was made by United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey; IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Linda Nguyen; and DEA San Francisco Field Division Special Agent Bob P. Beris.
This case is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation aimed at dismantling high-level criminal organizations through a collaborative approach involving multiple agencies.
Assistant United States Attorneys Daniel Pastor and Nicholas Parker are leading the prosecution with support from Amanda Martinez and Andy Ding. The investigation involved efforts from IRS-CI and DEA.