California Man Sentenced for Cocaine Trafficking and Money Laundering

 ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A California man was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for trafficking kilograms of cocaine and laundering narcotics proceeds and payments.

According to court documents, between November 2016 and June 2018, Eberardo Medina, 38, shipped approximately 15 kilograms of cocaine from California to New York for redistribution. A codefendant in New York would then traffic the cocaine to the Virginia region using a courier. The cocaine would often be picked up by a local reseller at Union Station, in Washington, D.C., who would redistribute the narcotics in the area, including in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Medina also utilized numerous individuals to launder narcotics proceeds and payments. Medina instructed individuals in California to either create bank accounts or use their existing accounts in order to launder money. Medina would provide the bank account information of those California-based accounts to his codefendant in New York. The codefendant in New York would then pay workers to deposit certain amounts of money into the California-based bank accounts in a classic structuring scheme meant to evade law enforcement. Once in California, the proceeds would be withdrawn and handed to Medina for a fee. During the conspiracy, Medina laundered at least $780,000 related to narcotics distribution.

The case was investigated as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF). The OCDETF program is a federal multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional task force that supplies supplemental federal funding to federal and state agencies involved in the identification, investigation, and prosecution of major drug trafficking organizations. The principal mission of the OCDETF program is to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the most serious drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and money laundering organizations, and those primarily responsible for the nation’s illegal drug supply.

G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Mark Herring, Attorney General of Virginia; Jesse R. Fong, Special Agent in Charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Washington; Ashan M. Benedict, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) Washington Field Division; Gary Hartman, Deputy Director of Washington/Baltimore HIDTA, Northern Virginia Financial Initiative; and M. Jay Farr, Arlington County Chief of Police, made the announcement after sentencing by Senior U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady. Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Karolina Klyuchnikova prosecuted the case.

A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 1:20-cr-51.