A Nigerian living in Florida, Durojaiye Monsuru Obafemi
Lawal, has been arrested by agents of US Drug Enforcement Agency, along with
some policemen, in a sting operation against Sinaloa cartel.
According to court documents, Lawal described himself as
“involved in money laundering and politically affiliated in Nigeria”.
Also arrested were two Miami Dade policemen Roderick Flowers
and Keith Edwards, who are also celebrities on social media, wearing gold
jewellery, smoking cigars, aping the Bad Boys, the Miami police action film
franchise.
Federal authorities now said the two cops could go to jail
together, according to a report by Miami Herald.
Flowers and Edwards are due to appear in federal court
today, the day after authorities arrested the two on charges that they agreed
to act as a muscle for an undercover agent-set up cocaine trafficking
operation.
Also charged: A Miami money laundering suspect named Manuel
Carlos Hernandez, who boasted Flowers was on his payroll, according to court
records.
According to a criminal complaint, the case was brought with
the help of a confidential source impersonating a Mexican cartel member,
arranging the international money laundering agreement with Hernandez, and
calling in the two police officers to help transport a shipment of “white
girls” – code word – for cocaine packages Homestead to Aventura.
“Welcome to the Sinaloa Cartel,” the source told officials,
who laughed and drove away after the September 16 transportation operation in
Miami.
The complaint was lifted late Thursday evening.
Flowers and Edwards are charged with conspiracy to
distribute and possess cocaine. The cocaine was indeed a fake, and the entire
operation was carefully coordinated by agents, according to court records.
The charges were the culmination of a six month
investigation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Hernandez is charged with conspiracy and money laundering.
He is charged with another man, Trevanti McLeod, and
Durojaiye Obafemi Monsuru Lawal, who, according to court documents, described
himself as “involved in money laundering and politically affiliated in
Nigeria”.
Flowers and Edwards were both members of the Miami-Dade
Priority Response Team, a unit set up to respond to major incidents after the
Parkland School massacre in 2018.
Flowers, 30, came from a law enforcement family. His sister
is a police officer in Georgia. His father is Raleigh Flowers, the Bal Harbor
police chief and a former high-ranking Hialeah officer.
Edwards is a former soldier and father of three children.
DEA agents and the confidential source first focused on
Hernandez, who ran Hernandez Investments in Davie. As the months progressed,
Hernandez bragged about the numerous clients he’d laundered money for, his fat
bank account, and plans to open a barber shop and car wash to launder dirty
money.
During the summer, the source arranged in secret audio and
video recordings a series of laundering deals with Hernandez, Lawal and McLeod
that involved drug money.
In July, Hernandez told the source that a Russian strip club
owner was trying to launder dirty money, the complaint said. He later told the
source that “he made some calls to law enforcement agencies” to investigate the
Russians and learned that they were informants, the complaint said.
The following month the source asked if Hernandez’s secret
cop source could keep a license plate for someone who allegedly owed him money.
DEA agents later learned that the police officer who ran the
day through a law enforcement database was Flowers.
Hernandez later told the source that Flowers and an unnamed
cop cousin were “on his payroll” acting as “collateral for money laundering
activities,” the complaint said.
The source met Flowers in Hernandez’s office on September 9.
The source asked if he was actually a police officer. “Yeah, I don’t look like
that, do I?” Flowers supposedly answered.
The source eventually offered to rent flowers to protect a
shipment of cocaine that was to be transported from a motel in Homestead to a
location in Aventura.
Flowers eagerly explained his safety skills and even stated
that he and Edwards both had SWAT training.
“Flowers showed with his hands that he was trained to shoot
in the stomach and chest area,” said the complaint. “He stated that if it was a
headshot, it would be from the ears near the forehead.”
The source paid Flowers $ 5,000 upfront, according to the
DEA. Edwards later met the source in person and also boasted of his
military-grade security training.
He also referred to himself as a “cop’s cop”, according to
the complaint.
The operation contract took place smoothly on September 16.
Flowers and Edwards accompanied the transport in separate cars from a hotel in
Homestead to one in Aventura, according to DEA.
*Reported by Miami Herald
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com