A man who oversaw a scheme to launder millions of dollars of narcotics money from the U.S. to drug organizations was sentenced to seven years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Daniel Shaun Zilke, who went by the nickname “the Englishman,” was also fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Zilke, 49, was arrested last year in May and pleaded guilty months later to conspiracy to aid and abet drug distribution, launder money and obstruction of an official government proceeding for stealing and attempting to cover up the theft of $150,000 in DEA undercover funds. He was sentenced Nov. 4.
Federal authorities accused Zilke of laundering money on behalf of drug cartels for five years starting in 2015. The case against Zilke and his associates began that year when an undercover DEA agent posing as a money launderer made contact with Zilke.
As part of a guilty plea, federal officials said, Zilke admitted telling the undercover agent that he had a client in Europe who needed hundreds of millions of dollars to move to Mexico and that he could use the bank account of a charity in Dallas to launder the money.
Prosecutors said the undercover agent helped Zilke move that money by allowing him to use bank accounts associated with businesses that often deal with large sums of money.
They alleged that Zilke and his associates also arranged numerous cash pickups from drug traffickers across the country and deposited them into various bank accounts, including some that were controlled by at least two other suspects in the case. The suspects were identified as Jeffrey Mark Thompson, 63, of Dallas and Gustavo Adolfo Aldana-Martinez, 58, of Pico Rivera, Calif. Both men have been convicted in the case.
Zilke and the two men each earned a commission that was a percentage of the amount laundered through their respective accounts, according to court documents. Prosecutors did not say what that percentage was.
At one point during the investigation, federal officials said, Zilke offered to cooperate and expose the money laundering organization. Investigators gave him $200,000 to be given to Thompson.
The intent was to have Thompson move the money though his bank accounts and eventually return the funds to the DEA undercover accounts, federal prosecutors said in a written statement.
“However, approximately two weeks after the cash delivery, Zilke returned to Thompson’s residence and took back $150,000 without telling the DEA agents,” the statement read. “After this theft of government funds, he repeatedly lied to the agents about the money and made excuses for why it was taking so long to receive the wire transfers for the full $200,000.”
Thompson, who is awaiting sentencing, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to conspiracy to aid and abet drug distribution, money laundering, and concealment money laundering of drug trafficking proceeds.
Aldana-Martinez, who has already been convicted on similar charges, is serving a four-year prison sentence.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
