Source: United States Department of Justice News
Tampa, FL – Senior U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew has sentenced Jason Pagan-Reyes (40, Orlando) to six years and six months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering. Pagan-Reyes had pleaded guilty on June 21, 2022, and is currently serving a drug-related state prison sentence.
According to court documents, Pagan-Reyes was part of a conspiracy to deliver $1 million in drug proceeds to a money laundering organization that would launder the money back to the Dominican Republic. Pagan-Reyes was in contact with a courier for that organization who was, in reality, an undercover officer. On July 11, 2020, while driving to meet with the undercover officer, a trooper from the Florida Highway Patrol stopped Pagan-Reyes’s minivan in Polk County for a variety of traffic offenses. After a police dog alerted to the odor of narcotics in the vehicle, law enforcement recovered $1,000,495 in two large bags. A search of Pagan-Reyes’s cellphone revealed communications consistent with both drug trafficking and money laundering.
This operation is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) investigation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Florida Highway Patrol. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at www.justice.gov/OCDETF. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Dan Baeza.