Photos: Police find $295m drug cash in Mexican house

[~lostgurl~]

Photos: Police find $295m drug cash in Mexican house

17 March 2007
NZ Herald

mexican bust.jpg
A haul of about US$206m dollars is seen after it was found stashed in a
house in an upscale neighbourhood of Mexico City. Photo / Reuters

MEXICO CITY - Police have found US$206 million (NZ$295m) in cash, belonging to drug smugglers who imported chemicals used to make methamphetamines, piled inside a mansion in a wealthy Mexico City neighborhood, officials said.

Police arrested seven people at the house. They found wads of hundreds of dollars stuffed in drawers, suitcases and closets around the house.
They also seized six Mercedes Benz vehicles and two other cars along with seven firearms, 200,000 euros ($381,700) and machinery used to make tablets.

The raid was one of the first dramatic successes in a clampdown on drug cartels launched by Mexican President Felipe Calderon shortly after he took office in December. In January, Mexico extradited several drug kingpins to the United States, including Osiel Cardenas, boss of the powerful Gulf cartel. Calderon has sent thousands of troops to drug crime hot spots including his home state of Michoacan, whose mountain ranges are riddled with laboratories producing methamphetamine for export to the United States.

The attorney general's office, which operates the police force that led the raid, said the money belonged to a drug gang operating behind a pharmaceuticals front company. The company imported from India tons of the chemical pseudoephedrine, used in the manufacture of methamphetamines.

The raid was the result of an investigation which started last December when police seized 19.5 tons of pseudoephedrine in Mexico's Lazaro Cardenas port, the attorney general's office said.

Mexican producers of methamphetamine are muscling in on the US market as police crack down on labs in the United States, according to a recent report by the US Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.
Following the US crackdown, so-called superlabs that mass produce methamphetamine have relocated to Mexico, where precursor chemicals like ephedrine are more easily available.

- REUTERS

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/stor...ectid=10429305

More photos can be seen by clicking the article link above.

[AntiAimer]

Sad because it's a double standard...wonder where all that money and cars will be going...heh. Someones department is going to be REALLLLLLYYYY happy.

[YKS]

Howdy Folks

SWIM really had no idea that there were still underground drug cartels around that stacked up so much cake. It really doesn't say to much information on who's money it was. Does anyone know?

[The Doors]

Does it matter? Stories like these are just to try and prove to the general public that they are doing something - numbers like these might sound impressing to some but it's a rather miniscule number.

[dre3k]

them boy's were stackin bread. See how much money in america is spent on drugs, and thats not even close to half. How Much does that effect our economy? because swim don't think this money was going to be money laundered through US banks? Or maybe? Just a though.

[Raw edge]

That story is totally bogus. That photo has been floating around the web for months.

[~lostgurl~]

The article was published in New Zealand's national newspaper "The Herald". They may make errors but it is rare when they publish an entire article that is bogus. Also the photo came from Reuters so I think its legit.

[Woodman]

HAA, Ha, Ha, ha, haaaaaaa!
This shit cracks me up!

"Mexican" Police find $295m drug cash?
BULLSHIT!

If true, it was probably more like $925 mil before those crooked Mother Fuckers had their pick at it, and I'll bet ol' Presidente got a fat cut out of THAT!

Still, that's a hell of a lot of money, so I doubt it.