Press Release
FORMER U.S. CUSTOMS & BORDER PATROL OFFICER CONVICTED OF BRIBERY IN ALIEN SMUGGLING OPERATION
February 19, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
R. Alexander Acosta, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Michael E. Yasofsky, Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, and Jonathan I. Solomon, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced that defendant Gabriel MacEnroe, 63, was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra in West Palm Beach to a prison term of sixty-three months, a $10,000 fine, and three years of supervised release for conspiring to violate the money laundering statute, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(h).
Also, in a case transferred from the District of South Carolina, as part of the sentencing hearing, MacEnroe entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to violate the wire fraud statute, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371. MacEnroe had been a fugitive in that case since June 2003. Judge Marra sentenced MacEnroe immediately to sixty-months’ imprisonment to be followed be a three-year term of supervised release. This sentence was ordered to run concurrently with the money laundering sentence previously imposed by the Court.
MacEnroe, a citizen of Ireland, maintained finance businesses, Commercial Capital Finance (“CCF”), in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Commercial Capital Establishment (“CCE”), in Liechtenstein. In 2000, MacEnroe received approximately $2,800,000 through a pyramid scheme that targeted United States victims. MacEnroe deposited the funds into his CCF and CCE bank accounts. Thereafter, in furtherance of the money laundering conspiracy, MacEnroe caused over $1,000,000 of these pyramid scheme fraud funds to be wired back into the United States. In May 2007, the United States was successful in extraditing MacEnroe from Switzerland.
Mr. Acosta commended the investigative efforts of the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The cases were prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys J. Brian McCormick and Robert J. Lehner.
A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at http://www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.
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