A Costa Rican man, illegally in the United States, was sentenced today to 97 months in prison for his role in laundering over $2 million in proceeds of several wire fraud schemes, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced.
Esteban De Jesus Campos Chanto, 43, of Trenton, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Judge Quraishi imposed a sentence in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in the case, between August 2019 and October 2021, Chanto participated in a multimillion-dollar money laundering conspiracy operating out of Costa Rica that targeted elderly victims in the United States. Conspirators in Costa Rica called senior citizens in the United States over the phone.
They induced them to mail or wire money to Chanto by claiming that the victims needed to pay off taxes and fees on lottery winnings or taxes and penalties to the United States government. In total, Chanto received more than $2 million from elderly victims who Chanto’s co-conspirators had defrauded. Chanto then wired the majority of the funds to his co-conspirators in Costa Rica and retained approximately $400,000 for himself as payment for his money laundering services.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Quraishi sentenced Chanto to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay restitution of $2.07 million.
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