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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

HSI Philadelphia's largest cash seizure yields Main Line drug trafficker, money launderer 5 years in prison



PHILADELPHIA — A drug trafficker and money launderer that brought in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) Philadelphia’s largest cash seizure was sentenced to more than five years in federal prison and four years of supervised release after a multi-year investigation.

More than $5 million in cash and assets were seized during the investigation of large-scale drug trafficker Ronald Belciano, age 42, of Newtown Square (formerly Villanova), Pennsylvania. He was sentenced Tuesday to 63 months in prison by a federal judge in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for conspiracy to distribute 100 kilograms of marijuana in and through central Pennsylvania and conspiracy to commit money laundering between December 2007 and November 2011.

In 2011, Belciano rented a vehicle and filled it with nearly $1.2 million. He paid a co-conspirator to drive it from Pennsylvania to California to pay for marijuana grown on Belciano’s 190-acre property and to purchase from other growers in Northern California. HSI special agents obtained a search warrant for one of Belciano’s homes, located in Villanova, Pennsylvania, and found another nearly $2.6 million in cash along with 1.5 kilograms of marijuana.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You will get a lot more time smuggling cigarettes than drugs it seems.