Washed Gold

Offers the compelling story of a high-level drug investigation, money laundering scheme, and bitter battles among government agencies involving a cocaine and financial operation so huge that L.A. investigators--where "the Mine" was based--refused to believe it existed.

La Mina ("the mine"), a Los Angeles-based money-laundering operation for the Medellin drug cartel, used phony sales receipts of nonexistent jewelry and gold to launder hundreds of millions of dollars per year for Colombian cocaine lords. Its elaborate network, stretching from L.A. to Manhattan's diamond district to a Panamanian bank, was broken after DEA agents in Atlanta launched Operation Polar Cap in 1987, a three-year undercover probe coordinated with the FBI, IRS and U.S. Customs despite rancorous interagency turf battles. Woolner, a Georgia journalist, has done an amazing job of reconstructing the investigation, sharply etching the players--informants, agents, prosecutors, drug traffickers. Mild-mannered DEA intelligence analyst Gail Shelby cracked the case open with the help of DEA's computer database in Washington, D.C. This fast-paced account reads like a crime thriller and would make an exciting movie. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This sprawling account of a drug and money-laundering case eventually gets bogged down in its own details. Woolner, associate editor at the Fulton County Daily Report, a legal newspaper in Atlanta, begins promisingly. In 1986, Ram¢n Costello (a pseudonym), an American living in Colombia caught in a cocaine deal, agreed in a plea bargain with Atlanta-based federal prosecutors to help set up a money-laundering operation to catch big-time drug traffickers. Costello then linked undercover federal agents with an associate connected to another money-laundering investigation in Los Angeles, and he himself met with notorious Colombian traffickers Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar. Woolner uses reconstructed dialogue to advance the story, as well as close description of episodes like an antsy moment in a New York City restaurant: New York area Drug Enforcement Agency agents who were throwing a party in a restaurant had to pretend not to recognize an Atlanta DEA agent who, as part of an undercover operation, had brought a money launderer to eat paella and deal in the same restaurant. However, the narrative grows too big for Woolner to handle clearly. A DEA operation uncovered La Mina (The Mine), a money laundry working out of Los Angeles and New York City. Competing agents from those cities, as well as from Atlanta, refused for a long time to recognize the links among their cases, and interagency turf wars also hampered investigation. Then, in February 1989, agents arrested money launderers in the LA and NYC jewelry districts. Prosecutors also got a guilty plea from a dirty Panamanian bank. Although the sham money-laundering operation organized by Costello didn't bring in a major Colombian drug dealer, it did net an associate launderer, Eduardo Mart¡nez. An interesting story, but this book flits so messily among characters and settings that it becomes wearying. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Woolner expertly unravels the tangled history of Operation Polar Cap, the complex investigation of a highly successful money-laundering scheme. Dubbed "La Mina" by the notorious Medell{¡}in drug cartel, this laundering operation was responsible for legitimizing more than $1.2 billion in illegal profits in the 1980s. When an investigative unit in Atlanta stumbled on major evidence implicating the cartel, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and FBI operatives in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami also became involved in the high-profile case. Woolner documents all the myriad particulars of the investigation and the ensuing litigation in concise, journalistic style, providing a comprehensive yet digestible chronicle of a fascinating sting. Margaret Flanagan

During a sting involving a phony money-laundering scheme, the Atlanta branch of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began to hear about la Mina ("the Mine"), a large, efficient operation responsible for cleansing millions in drug-dirty money. The DEA gradually traced a web of banks, couriers, and front men who moved physical and electronic money around the world, mainly between Colombia and the United States. As other DEA branches as well as the FBI and the IRS became involved, the coordination of the investigation became more complex, and turf wars among the agencies grew intense. Eventually, the Mine was closed down, and a number of major players went to jail. Woolner gives this story its complicated due, following the international investigation in great detail. When she focuses on the Atlanta probe involving informant Ramon Costello, who ultimately ensnared two mid-level players, the story moves crisply. But at other times, the plot tends to disappear in a multitude of details and participants. As a result, the book's appeal will probably be limited. For larger true crime collections.
Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L.,
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.