Who wouldn’t want to be living large in retirement, feet up, money in the bank, not a care in the world?
For some people, retirement can be a dream come true when the mortgage is finally paid off, and if there is an unbelievable amount of money in the bank, it can be even sweeter. For the first time, hobbies can be pursued more frequently, and the freedom to travel to wherever and whenever the urge surges is an added benefit.
Having worked from an early age, hard, Genaro M. from Madrid, at 84-years old, was the proud owner of 25 companies that grossed millions of euros every year. Those profits poured regularly into his 44 bank accounts, and one of his companies alone, Lacy Patrimonio S.L, had a share capital of €3.5 million. The properties he controlled, 28 in total, were all fully paid up, mortgage-free, and worth millions.
Genaro wasn’t alone in reaping the benefits of a life long-lived. His Spanish compatriot, Eugenio C, was 89-years old, owned 264 companies and 134 properties, from luxury villas to commercial properties, and equally had bank accounts bursting at the seams with money.
Jose Luis G., also in his eighties, may not have possessed the sheer wealth of the other two, but he still controlled 32 properties, both residential and commercial, had 32 top-of-the-range cars and two boats valued in excess of €500,000. His company, Sail Rent S.L, had assets of more than €2.4 million, so he wasn’t doing so bad for himself either.
The man who had helped them amass all this enviable wealth was Garcia Crespo. He was a 65-year-old attorney who also lived in Madrid, a very affluent part of Madrid, and, like his three clients, Crespo was rolling in money and flashy cars.
He controlled 30 properties, plots of land, and 53 bank accounts, again overflowing with cash. Because of his savvy business acumen, his three clients, as well as himself, were rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Anyone looking on from the outside would wonder immediately why Genaro, Eugenio, and Jose Luis, with all the companies they owned, with all the properties they controlled, and all the bank accounts at their disposal, would be living in care homes on pensions of €286 to €675 per month.
The lifestyle they were living on paper was not reflected in the life they were living in reality.
Even Crespo’s declared official income didn’t reflect in any way, shape, or form, how he managed to have such an affluent lifestyle.
So where was all the money coming from?
That was exactly what the National Police, the Guardia Civil, and the revenue service were wondering.
When the investigations started in 2018 it revealed a network that stretched from South America to Spain, to Sweden, to Poland and all the countries in between. This international network was in the business of selling drugs – hashish, cocaine, pills. And all those drugs generated enormous amounts of cash that had to be legitimized. That was where the octogenarians came in, and their system of cleaning that cash.
But how had these pensioners gotten involved in laundering drug money in the first place?
The operation, codenamed Operation Beautiful, amassed reams of photographs of these three company owners, as well as another three in similar nursing home scenarios, and quickly connected all of them to the one person they all had in common – the attorney, García Crespo.
Not only that but all the companies, all the legal documents, all the property titles, were signed by all six pensioners in the same banks and notaries.
On paper they were the owners, in reality, Crespo made sure that he had the power of attorney over each of his six recruits. It was his job to legitimize all the cash, and it was his idea to take advantage of the octogenarians who had nothing to lose living on the poverty line as they were.
For their cooperation, each of them was paid an exorbitant fee of €100 for every company and bank account they signed for.
It wasn’t a great deal of money, far from it, but considering that between them they owned, at least on paper, 387 companies, 414 properties in Madrid alone, and close to 300 bank accounts, it amounted to a tidy income for them on a regular basis, especially as the company was continually accruing assets.
Not one of them considered the legal implications of what they were doing, not one of them considered that they may be legally liable in a court of law. Unfortunately, ignorance is never a good defense strategy and all a jury would see would be the facts. In the eyes of the law, they were the legal owners of companies that legitimized drug money and that they owned properties bought by the illegal profits of those drugs, and that they had bank accounts where the freshly laundered money was stashed.
In the eyes of the law, they were as guilty as the drug runners. But the police agencies weren’t interested in arresting six old-age pensioners. What they wanted was the head of the international drug trafficking syndicate. They wanted Juan Andrés Cabeza.
By profession, he was a car salesman. He sold luxury cars and had a few parked in the garage of his penthouse in the exclusive area of Costa Brava, a penthouse that was valued at over €2 million. But selling cars alone didn’t fund his extravagant lifestyle of expensive suits, exclusive parties, 5-star holidays, Rolex watches. That all came from the drugs that he imported from South America and Europe and distributed throughout Spain, sometimes hidden in the cars he delivered nationwide.
He was completely unaware, just like the pensioners and Crespo, that he was under close surveillance, his phones bugged, every conversation recorded, an airtight case being built against him.
Those listening devices helped peel back the layers of how the international drug trafficking network functioned. The recordings revealed bribes at the seaports and crooked cops on the payroll. Trackers were secreted on cars, agents were placed on the ground to follow the movements of the main players and the unscrupulous individuals who supported the criminal enterprise that operated from Alicante to Valencia to Galicia.
By September 2019 enough evidence was collected to start making arrests. The investigating agencies closed in, scooped up everyone involved, including Garcia Crespo, the octogenarians, 81 suspects, and, of course, Juan Andrés Cabeza. Internationally, arrests were made in Romania, Sweden, Bulgaria, Albania, and several as far away as Colombia.
Operation Beautiful had smashed one of the biggest drug trafficking organizations in the Mediterranean. They confiscated properties, luxury cars, guns, expensive watches, yachts, €2.19 million in cash, froze 800 checking accounts holding millions more, and drugs, hashish, and cocaine. A drone was also seized that was used to smuggle drugs to Spain from Morocco.
It was a major success for all the agencies that had cooperated internationally on the investigation, one of the biggest busts of a drugs ring in Europe.
Garcia Crespo, the attorney, was accused of laundering €3.7 million through the 53 bank accounts in his own name and through the dozens of properties that he owned.
The octogenarians were in a state of shock. Genaro M, 84 years old, Eugenio C, 89 years old, and Jose Luis C, couldn’t believe that they were at the center of a multi-national drugs network. When questioned they explained as best as they could that they knew nothing about any drugs, even less about laundering money. They were just simple pensioners.
They didn’t understand these things, were just old men, and had simply signed where the attorney had told them to. Garcia Crespo had, they stated, taken advantage of their impoverished situations and used them for his illegal purposes without their knowledge. Surely, they weren’t going to be sent to prison.
When the story broke in the news, the court of public opinion chimed in. A large majority of them reasoned that there was no way that a judge, presented with the five surviving 80- to 90-year-old men, was going to give them a prison term under these circumstances.
Any decent lawyer would present them as frail old men with more time behind them than in front, the sands of time running out on each of them.
Time will tell as the case is still ongoing.
But who’s to say that maybe, just maybe, the 80s Laundry Gang were actually the brains behind the whole operation.
Maybe Genaro, Eugenio, and Jose Luis were having the last laugh on everyone with more money, flash cars, and luxury properties hidden away for a rainy day so that, in the end, finally, they would enjoy their retirement in true style, and sail off into the sunset?
You never know…