Word: saccoccia
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...merchants who line the rough-and-tumble streets of New York City's diamond district, he is known as Steve "Yorakim" -- Hebrew for green, the color of money. But to prosecutors in Manhattan, as well as Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Providence, Stephen Anthony Saccoccia is known as one of the country's biggest, savviest and most wanted money launderers for Colombia's drug cartels. That is, until shortly before Thanksgiving weekend, when hundreds of government agents mounted a simultaneous five-state assault on Saccoccia's organization, arresting and indicting 50 people and seizing millions of dollars' worth of businesses...
...smashing of Saccoccia's empire is actually the third major drug-money % laundering indictment in the precious-metals and diamond industry in as many years. The first phase of what the Federal Government calls Operation Polar Cap involved the 1988 breakup of a $1 billion money-laundering scheme for the Medellin cartel through a Los Angeles jewelry mart. "Saccoccia was in a position to step right in after we knocked out Polar Cap One," says U.S. Attorney Lincoln Almond of Rhode Island. "We were onto him from...
...came last week in Geneva, where Saccoccia, 35, was arrested with his wife (and reputed confederate) Donna, carrying $500,000 in cash. Yet that is mere pocket change for precious-metals traders, whose enormous cash transactions make them ideal fronts for laundering. "A precious-metals dealer may buy and sell hundreds of millions of dollars of gold in a year in numerous transactions, show a minimal profit, produce limited business records that appear legitimate and not raise suspicion," explains Dennis Fortune, a money- laundering expert and 24-year IRS veteran...