A Happy Valley woman is accused of leading a money laundering cell that hid nearly $100 million in drug proceeds for a drug trafficking organization.
Enhua Fang, 37, is the first of five defendants named in a six-count indictment out of federal court in North Carolina, charged with conspiracy to launder money, conceal money laundering, engage in transactions involving derived property and aiding and abetting in those crimes.
Fang was arrested in Oregon on April 18.
She appeared in federal court in Portland Tuesday afternoon with Assistant Federal Public Defender Ryan Costello. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie A. Russo ordered Fang to remain in custody and transferred to North Carolina for prosecution after prosecutors urged her continued detention.
The indictment is sealed but the government’s motion to keep Fang in jail lays out the allegations from a 2022 multi-agency investigation.
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Though money laundering isn’t a charge that typically calls for detention, the “scope, scale and volume” of Fang’s alleged crimes warrants that she remain in jail, according to Melanie L. Alsworth, acting assistant deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Narcotics and Dangerous Drug section.
“The defendant was central to the organization’s money laundering mechanism,” Alsworth wrote in the motion.
Fang was “hiding in the shadows” while “calling the shots,” Alworth wrote in the motion.
Fang is accused of operating one of the most active cells and allegedly was the first point of contact for Mexican drug trafficking groups, according to Alsworth.
She would coordinate with U.S.-based drug traffickers and dispatch couriers to pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug money and make bank deposits, Alsworth wrote.
Between May 2022 and January 2024, investigators tracked 1,149 cash deposits completed by the couriers that exceeded $92 million, Alsworth wrote.
The couriers deposited money in accounts registered in the names of shell companies controlled by the illicit organization, the motion alleges. The money was then laundered further through cryptocurrency and other bank accounts, Alsworth wrote.
Fang, for example, was intercepted on a federal wiretap on June 1, 2022, arranging to pick up money from a drug trafficker in North Carolina to pay a source of supply in Mexico, Alsworth wrote.
The drug trafficker called and asked to “make an appointment” and she responded that she would text “the serial,” according to the motion.
The trafficker texted Fang a long code, which was the serial number to a dollar bill used for verification purposes. Fang was told the deposit was “100″ and was sent an address for a meet-up, the motion says.
Shortly afterward, the trafficker texted Fang a different deposit amount, “110,” and sent a different address and a courier sent by Fang picked up $110,000 in cash, the motion says.
Cash pickups typically ranged from $100,000 to as much as $300,000, Alsworth wrote.
The operation used encrypted messages, fake driver’s licenses and different communication channels to avoid detection, according to the motion.
From May to September 2022, for example, the group’s couriers operating under Fang’s direction made at least 102 bulk cash deposits totaling about $17 million into the account of a shell company called Kowloon Holding Inc., according to the motion.
The deposits were made in banks in about 20 different states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to Alsworth.
With Fang facing a lengthy prison sentence if convicted, she’ll have an incentive to flee to China, her home country, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, Alsworth wrote in the motion. Fang also would have access to high-quality, false ID documents that the money laundering operation is alleged to have used, Alsworth argued.
While Fang didn’t use false ID, she took other steps to try to conceal her identity, the prosecutor wrote, including using multiple cellphones and changing SIM cards and phone numbers.
Investigators seized bank records, security footage from banks and conducted physical surveillance of the money pickups and cash deposits, the motion said.
Fang has lived in the United States since March 2021 and is classified as a legal permanent resident. But her immediate family remains in China and “can provide an easy safe haven” for her should she decide to leave the country, the prosecutor argued in court papers.
She spent about five weeks in China last fall, according to federal court documents. Within 15 months of her move to the United States, she was active in the alleged money laundering scheme, according to Alsworth. She’s lived in Oregon and New York and has no legitimate job, the prosecutor wrote to the court.