All the clues the anti-narcotics agents followed led to a clothing store whose entrance was usually occupied by mannequins, bicycles and grills. The establishment was located in Norcross, a northern suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Advertisements for shipping companies hung in the windows of Pulga La Esperanza. remittancesthe true interest of a fentanyl trafficking ring linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Each of the members of the criminal cell questioned by the DEA pointed to the owner, Sandra Hernández Chilel. According to their testimonies, the woman had agreed to send more than a million dollars to Mexico for a drug trafficker nicknamed El Viejo. He hid the transfers using false names, amidst multiple legitimate deposits that migrants made to their families.
The figure that Pulga La Esperanza moved seems modest compared to the 4.2 million dollars that a Guatemalan woman transferred to a group of drug traffickers through a chain of stores in the northwest of the country. Nor is it close to the 10 million dollars that circulated from a denim clothing establishment in Dallas to bosses of the feared Jalisco poster.
Modest businesses, owned by Hispanic families and located in suburbs with a high concentration of migrants and little police presence, continue to be one of the methods used by Mexican cartels to move the illicit profits they obtained from the sale of drugs in the United States. In recent years, authorities have dismantled at least seven such schemes in Georgia, Oregon, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Missouri and Washington. Three of these files mention local CJNG distributors.
This illicit activity is hidden among the enormous remittance flow who travels every year from the United States to Mexico. It is the country’s main source of foreign currency, which in 2025 raised 61,777 million dollars, just below the record of 64,000 million registered the previous year. The average shipping is $403. Guanajuato, Jalisco and Michoacán top the list of receiving states, a coincidence that also places them on the map of influence of some of the most powerful cartels in the country.
The operation of money laundering in the Pulga La Esperanza store in Georgia is one of the most recent. At the head of the network was El Tío, a Jalisco Cartel operator also known by his paternal last name, González. This man had lived for a few years in Atlanta before moving to Morelia, Michoacán. From there he directed, through WhatsApp messages and coded phone calls, a cell of distributors that operated in different regions of Georgia.
El Tío’s shipments crossed the border in cargo trucks through a checkpoint in McAllen, Texas. A driver of Indian origin was given car batteries loaded with fentanyl pills. The instruction was to go through customs inspection between six and seven in the morning, never at night. Once in Atlanta, the organization distributed fentanyl and a mixture of cocaine with fentanyl that they called “Frank Lucas,” in reference to the infamous kingpin who dominated drug trafficking in New York during the 1960s and 1970s, according to a DEA report incorporated into the court file.
The members of the cell who agreed to collaborate with the authorities revealed that, when the profits accumulated, they went to Pulga La Esperanza with bundles of less than $10,000 and used Uber to avoid arousing suspicion. In a private area, in the back of the store, they counted the money in front of Hernández Chilel, his daughter or an employee. In just two months they delivered more than a million dollars through an ant operation. Almost all of the cash was destined for Michoacán. The money was sent to El Tío in remittances of less than $1,000 to evade federal controls. They used fictitious names of senders and recipients, while the trafficker provided photographs of authentic Mexican identification to give the appearance of legality to the transactions. This woman “maintained constant communication with him regarding money deliveries,” the accusation states.
The DEA tracked the organization since September 2024. A year later it managed to imprison several of El Tío’s collaborators. Hernández Chilel, the owner of the store, was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to launder money and operate a funds transfer business without a license. Lacking legal immigration status, the 50-year-old woman will be deported to her hometown Guatemala once he serves his sentence. The Michoacan boss who hired her is still at large.
The stores that laundered 12 million
Brenda Barrera was a businesswoman active on social networks. In several videos on Facebook he appeared organizing raffles and giving gifts to those who sent money to their countries from La Popular, a chain of stores selling Latin American products that had six branches in Oregon and Washington. “I hope you visit us and support us,” he said in front of the camera when inviting his first customers during the summer of 2020. The business grew rapidly and he was soon seen driving a luxurious Cadillac truck.
But the US Department of Justice maintains that this “success” was a smokescreen. His main source of income was a 10% commission for each shipment he sent for Mexican drug traffickers. Between August and November 2024 alone, he transferred more than $4.2 million to “places in Mexico associated with drug trafficking.” Since she was contacted by members of organized crime in 2021, she sent more than $12 million and obtained profits of $1.2 million, according to court documents.
Barrera, 40 years old and originally from Guatemala, also invented identities to make the transfers. “For 500 or even 1,000 dollars we do not ask for any identification,” he stated in one of his videos.
His participation came to light thanks to two drug traffickers turned informants for the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit. Both collaborated in five operations in which they gave him thousands of dollars. They told him that that money was from a cartel. Two undercover agents then posed as couriers for a drug dealer and handed him $10,000 in the parking lot of a Home Depot store.
Federal police arrested her on April 16, 2025. During searches of her home in Beaverton, Oregon, they found $120,000 in cash, jewelry, and high-end clothing. In January she was sentenced to almost four years in prison. When she regains her freedom, in February 2028, she will be deported.
Himself modus operandi used by the Mexican José Alonso Páramo Argüello, owner of the Santa María stores in Oregon. Between January 2, 2024 and December 3, 2025, his three businesses sent remittances worth more than seven million dollars to destinations in Mexico that the Prosecutor’s Office links to drug trafficking.
To a government informant who told him he was a drug trafficker, Argüello commented: “You sell whatever you want; you are a merchant and that’s it,” according to the court file. After that conversation he received more than $45,000, which he distributed through 22 electronic transfers. Like Barrera, he charged a 10% commission. He was arrested in March and his criminal case is ongoing.
Doña Bella’s dark business
Behind a row of piñatas and shelves full of tortillas, sweet bread, piggy banks and typical Mexican clothing, Ana Bella Sánchez Ríos served members of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel in a store in Virginia who came frequently to hand her wads of bills. Federal prosecutors maintain that the 53-year-old woman laundered more than $4.3 million at her store, Bella’s Tortilla & Meat Market.
Doña Bella, as her clients called her, was famous for her kind treatment. One of his favorite phrases that he exclaimed on social media was: “The bread has arrived.” However, it had become the last link in a long financial chain of organized crime that, in the United States, began with distributors of cocaine, heroin and dope from California. The cartel convinced her to move a fortune from Virginia to Mexico.
“Sánchez Ríos’ role was to receive money from several people who worked for the CJNG, which she knew were proceeds from drug trafficking,” the Government said in a statement. “Then he transferred that money to people in Mexico.” The woman was sentenced to eight years in prison.
The Jalisco Cartel also found an ally in Iván Noe Valerio, manager of a western clothing store called Yoli’s Western Wear, in Dallas, Texas. Over time, Valerio, then 23 years old, helped move more than $10 million generated from the sale of heroin and methamphetamine in Dallas, one of CJNG’s main distribution centers in the United States.
José Valdovinos Jiménez, alias La Roca, was the CJNG operator in charge of transporting shipments to North Texas, processing them in clandestine laboratories, distributing them in several American cities, and sending the profits to Mexico. More than 11,000 transfers were made from the business managed by Valerio. The shipments, almost always with false identities, did not exceed $950.
In just six days, seven La Roca emissaries delivered almost $164,000 in cash to the store. According to what he told investigators, Valerio charged just $20 for each transfer. Like the other merchants who moved money for drug traffickers, Valerio ended up in prison and lost everything.
