Tenderloin drug dealer laundered money through Oakland business: DOJ

( KRON ) — A Honduran man was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for dealing fentanyl in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood and laundering the proceeds, the United States Department of Justice said. A now-closed money service business in Oakland and its owner was also involved in the crimes.

Christian Grajeda-Varela, 25, admitted to selling about 1.5 pounds of fentanyl to a drug dealer in the Tenderloin in July 2023. A search of his Oakland home yielded 109 more grams of fentanyl, cocaine and heroin.

According to court documents, WhatsApp messages were found on Grajeda-Varela’s phone containing international wire transfer receipts from America Latina, a money business at 1226 Fruitvale Ave. in Oakland that has now closed.

Grajeda-Varela told investigators that between March and August 2022 he brought $235,000 in cash to America Latina, which the business then wired to people in Mexico and Honduras. Each wire was less than $3,000 to avoid entering customer information.

The owner of America Latina, 45-year-old Oakland resident Griselda Cancelada Liceaga, was sending the money transfers, Grajeda-Varela said. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

“According to her plea agreement, while at her money service business America Latina, Liceaga sent multiple international wire receipts via WhatsApp between March and August 2022 to an individual arrested and prosecuted for drug trafficking.  She further admitted to using the names of unrelated persons as the wire senders and did so with the intent to evade the $3,000 transaction reporting requirement under federal law,” the DOJ wrote.

Liceaga knew to avoid sending more than 3,000 because of anti-money laundering training she had taken for the purpose of her business, according to the DOJ.

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