THE BORDER REPORT

For the second time in a month, a high level border official has been indicted, this time accused of shredding evidence for the Stanford Financial Group, a group busted by the Feds last year for bilking investors out of nearly $7 billion. Lesser known but arguably more profound, the investment group had been laundering money for Amado Carrillo Fuentes’ Juárez Cartel.

Tom Raffanello was the Special Agent in Charge for Arizona between 1996 and 2002 when he then headed the DEA’s Miami office before retiring five years ago.

Prior to both of those positions, Raffanello was best known for heading the investigations into Manuel Noriega in Panama and then for his work in heading the extraditions against the Cali Cartel and the arrest of Fabio Ochoa of the Medellín Cartel.

In early September, Raffanello was indicted for shredding evidence in the federal case against disgraced Texas banker Allen Stanford. According to court records, Raffanello had gone to work for the Stanford Investment Group after retiring from the DEA. He was in charge of security for the firm.

The investment group was shattered by the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year for engaging in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme that took investors’ money and turned it into disastrous business ventures and to support Allen’s lifestyle.

The Feds took over the Stanford group’s operations on Feb. 17. A week later, Raffanello ordered employees to call a shredding company and had evidence destroyed in a 95-gallon barrel. One of his security lieutenants watched over the shredding firm’s employees while they completed the task.

The Stanford group has a long and storied past with the Juárez and Gulf cartels.

According to court documents filed last February, the Juárez Cartel and Stanford investors had opened ten accounts worth $3 million in a Stanford bank in Antigua. That case may never come to light because the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the case against the investment group, cannot file criminal charges, only civil.

The DEA and FBI will have to investigate Stanford’s investments in Peru, Venezuela and Mexico, to build a money laundering case against the group. Raffanello has not been implicated in any of the money laundering suspicions or the Ponzi Scheme.

He is the second high level border official to be arrested in connection with the international drug and money laundering trade.

In early September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Richard P. Cramer was arrested for negotiating a 600 pound shipment of cocaine bound for Vigo, Spain. He was also charged with secreting information from ICE and DEA databases and selling those to the cartel for as little as $2,000. After leaving Arizona, Cramer took a position as an ICE attaché for the Guadalajara office.

I now understand that ICE has closed its offices in Guadalajara.

Have a pleasant evening.