ATLANTA — The head of a multi-million-dollar drug trafficking and money laundering ring faces at least a decade in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges involving methamphetamine “conversion” laboratories.
Monica Dominguez Torres, 36, of Mexico, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced Monday.
The agency said her organization operated labs that converted liquid methamphetamine from Mexico into hundreds of kilograms of crystal meth, some of it destined for sale in the Atlanta area.
“Dominguez’s elaborate criminal operation has been dismantled, and more than $3.5 million of illicit drug proceeds have been seized as a result of our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners’ diligent work,” U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said.
When agents arrested Dominguez at her home in Conyers in February of last year, they found and seized more than $1.7 million in cash, five firearms and three vehicles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Dominguez, who is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 15, led a criminal organization that laundered drug proceeds and sent the money to Mexico, the government said. Their methods included buying five residences, among them a seven-bedroom waterfront home in Jonesboro, most of them with cash. They also bought nine luxury vehicles worth about $780,000.
Dominguez also spent nearly $400,000 at Louis Vuitton and more than $425,000 at Burberry, over about four and a half years, the government said.
The investigation was conducted by numerous federal and state agencies plus the sheriff’s offices in Cobb and Paulding counties. It was part of a nationwide initiative targeting cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
In April, federal agencies in Atlanta announced 22 arrests involving two Mexican drug cartels and the seizure of more than 100 pounds of fentanyl. That was enough to kill every Georgian twice, Jae W. Chung, acting special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta division, said at the time.
Chung said after Dominguez’s guilty plea that she and her organization had been “removed from our streets,” adding, “this criminal organization had no regard for the destructive impact on our communities.”
The announcement included no information about Dominguez’s conspirators but said she faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years to life in prison for her trafficking conviction. The money laundering conviction carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.