Thread: As Businesses Flee, Jerry Brown's California Attracts A Different Kind Of "Investment

As Businesses Flee, Jerry Brown's California Attracts A Different Kind Of "Investment"

Posted 06:39 PM ET
investors.com

When California Gov. Jerry Brown hung out the "all welcome" sign for illegals, Mexico's drug cartels heard him loud and clear. Raids on Thursday left lawmen declaring Los Angeles a cash-laundering mecca.

Roping off 100 blocks of downtown Los Angeles this week, federal agents from the U.S. attorney's office raided roughly 70 garment district businesses along with a few houses in tony Westwood and Beverly Hills.

The suspected crime was laundering money for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. Agents hauled out $65 million in cash stuffed in duffel bags, suitcases and boxes, some of it blood-spattered.

The cash came from hostage ransoms, drug sales and alien-smuggling fees. Some of those arrested were charged with "various immigration offenses," according to the affidavit.

The suspects are from a mishmash of nationalities. But the business opportunity itself was from south of the border, which is where the vast wave of illegal immigrants is also rolling in from, and it is made possible by Mexico's largest cartel, which rakes in as much as a third of its profits on fees from smuggling illegals.

The wife of the cartel's now-imprisoned king of kingpins, Shorty Guzman, even slipped over the border in 2011 to give birth at a Lancaster hospital outside Los Angeles. She ensured that her anchor baby would have no trouble carrying on the family business here, showing how well-rooted the "business" is in California.

That fact calls to mind Brown's loud statement on Aug. 26 telling illegal immigrants they were "all welcome" in the Golden State. Years of sanctuary-city activity here has ensured that border jumpers, including cartel members, could flourish with no fear of authorities. There has been little monitoring of what they are up to until now, given the scope of the activity rolled up.

Lawmen bill Los Angeles as "the epicenter" of the billions in Mexican-cartel money laundering. That's quite an achievement for Brown, who has bested places such as Ecuador and Cuba as a business destination for laundering ill-gotten gains while at the same time overseeing the exodus of 73,000 businesses that left the state in the last decade due to high taxes and regulations.

We hope he's proud of himself.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...ls-move-in.htm

http://www.alipac.us/f9/%24100-milli...busted-310794/

I'm not sure Brown brought them here.

1. Mexican Drug War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. 
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
   Wikipedia
   
   Mexico is supported by the United States in this conflict through the Mérida Initiative. ... Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed ... 1960s,Mexican narcotic smugglers started to smuggle drugs on a major scale. ... successes against a particular cartel, so cartels often will attempt to use law . . .