FBI: Drug Kingpin Dethroned

The FBI web site offers a piece on their takedown of a drug kingpin in Miami.

For years, Alvaro Lopez Tardón, a Spanish national, was living the high life in Miami—fancy cars, seaside condos, designer jewelry, and expensive leather goods. But it all came crashing down in the summer of 2011 when he was named in a U.S. federal money laundering indictment as the head of an international narcotics trafficking enterprise. His illicit enterprise was believed responsible for distributing more than 7,500 kilos of South American cocaine in Spain and laundering more than $14 million in illegal drug proceeds in the United States.

Last fall, after being tried and convicted on numerous money laundering charges, Tardón was sentenced to an astonishing 150 years—exchanging his spacious South Beach penthouse for a small federal prison cell where he will spend the rest of his life. And in addition to the sentence, a $14 million money judgment and a $2 million fine were entered against him, and his assets are in the process of being forfeited. 

Tardón made his initial mark in the drug trade back in the 1990s, when he—along with his brother Artemio—worked for a ruthless drug trafficker in Spain. By the early 2000s, the Tardón brothers began a bloody feud with their boss and set about building their own criminal enterprise. They were ultimately successful—Alvardo directed the enterprise’s illegal activities primarily from Miami, where he visited often, and second-in-command Artemio ran things from Madrid.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2015/february/drug-kingpin-dethroned/drug-kingpin-dethroned?utm_campaign=email-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=fbi-top-stories&utm_content=400425