It’s official: the fashion industry is breaking bad.
Yesterday, federal agents raided multiple Los Angeles fashion companies allegedly involved in a drug cartel money laundering ring taking place in L.A.’s Fashion District. More than $65 million was seized, and multiple arrests were made.
Authorities used the code name "Operation Fashion Police" for a case so large that it required at least 1,000 agents to search over 40 locations, and the government had several separate organizations, including the F.B.I. and the D.E.A., investigating the situation simultaneously.
Court documents detail an elaborate scheme where, allegedly, the businesses involved transported money made from drug deals in the U.S. back to Mexico. It all started when a drug cartel in Sinaloa, Mexico, who was holding a girl hostage, had no way to receive the ransom money the girl's family agreed to pay. The cartel directed them to Q.T. Fashion, which the family paid in dollars, then shipped the paid-for clothes to an importer at no cost to it. The importer then took a cut and gave the drug cartel the amount the clothing was worth in pesos. The money laundering was required to circumvent a law in Mexico that restricts large deposits of U.S. dollars.
Nine people, mostly high-ranking employees, have been arrested so far from Yili Underwear, Gayima Underwear, Pacific Eurotex, and QT Fashion, the parent company of QT Maternity and Andres Fashion. Authorities are also searching for employees-turned-fugitives from a wholesale clothing company based in Sinaloa, Mexico called Maria Ferre S.A. de C.V.
The case “is still very much ongoing,” said a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Crime has been very much in vogue in the fashion industry lately. Recently thieves stole half a million dollars worth of Louis Vuitton products, and let's not froget the female man cave allegedly robbed of millions of dollars in goods that, in a bizarre twist, turned out to be fake.
[via Los Angeles Times]
