GOVERNMENT SEEKS $8.2 MILLION IN COCAINE PROCEEDS

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) The money is nice and clean now, just blips on computer
screens at three New York banks that add up to more than $8.2 million.

It has came a long way from its dirty origins: $20, $50, and $100 bills
tendered on the street in exchange for cocaine, federal authorities say.

The drug cash was laundered along a trail from Kennedy International
Airport to Brazil and back again, according to court papers asking a judge
to let the government take the money.

The money represents several years of investigation by the Drug Enforcement
Administration into a ''black market'' money exchange it says was operated
by Marcos Glikas, of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Even added to $757,410 seized in the New York hotel room of a Glikas
courier, the money amounts to but a few days' work for the group, suggest
figures in the forfeiture action, filed June 2 in U.S. District Court here.

The case illustrates the difficulty in stopping vast sums of drug money
from being laundered through an international web of bank and checking
accounts.

U.S. authorities seize tens of millions of dollars along the wash cycle
each year, but believe untold billions escape on airline passengers, hidden
in cargo containers, or through bogus checking accounts.

The Glikas group was unexpectedly unmasked in 1998 by DEA agents working
with northern New Jersey police investigating an alleged drug trafficker,
Ernesto Ceballos.

''It very quickly evolved into a window on a money-laundering scheme,''
said Anthony J. Senneca, the agent in charge of the Newark DEA office.

Ceballos, a fugitive from a 1992 New York state indictment, is believed to
run a drug operation in Colombia that sends more than 15,000 kilograms 16.5
tons of cocaine annually to the United States, according to the forfeiture
action.

Glikas operated a jewelry business called Miratur, but also served as a
money exchanger for Ceballos and other traffickers, court papers said.

Money exchanges are legitimate, but not when they disguise the origin and
destination of funds.

Black market exchangers are needed since traffickers avoid cash deposits of
more than $10,000 in U.S.-based accounts because such transactions leave
records.

The volume of cash produced by drug sales discourages breaking it into
deposits of less than $10,000. A kilogram of cocaine 2.2 pounds costs
wholesale buyers $15,000. That amount of cash, in small bills, weighs more
than three kilograms.

Glikas began making regular trips between New York and Brazil in the late
1980s, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter W. Gaeta, who is representing the
government in the forfeiture action.

Miratur employed Tania Schahanof, Alberto Kern and Ricardo Amaral. The DEA
determined they gathered cash in the metropolitan area from drug dealers
and distributed it to ''smurfs'' -- couriers who either smuggled it out of
the country or put amounts under $10,000 into many checking accounts.

The smuggled cash was taken to Glikas in Brazil, who would issue bundles of
checks with blank payee lines that Amaral would take to the United States,
court papers said.

The payee lines were then filled with a variety of names for deposit into
numerous bank accounts in those names, to avoid the suspicions raised by
third-party checks, Gaeta said.

Most of the money from those accounts was wired to a single account of the
drug group, creating layers of insulation and the appearance of legitimate
transactions, Gaeta said.

The exchanger, who keeps a portion of the dollars as a fee, now has money
in which to conduct legitimate business.

The DEA's Newark office obtained a telephone wiretap on a member of the
Ceballos group, who was contacted at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York on
Feb. 10, 1998, by Glikas, who had just arrived in New York from Brazil.

Intercepted conversations showed that Glikas was to expect deliveries of
$300,000 and $200,000. Schahanof checked into the hotel Feb. 12, 1998,
according to court papers.

She was back in the United States in early March, at the Doral Hotel in New
York, where she got $400,000 in drug money from an employee of Kern's,
$57,000 from Kern, and $290,000 from a drug dealer in a Colombian operated
by ''El Tio,'' court papers said.

Investigators were now monitoring Schahanof's cell phone, and were able to
seize 56 kilograms of El Tio cocaine and three suspected dealers, court
papers said.

DEA agents also raided Schahanof's hotel room and seized $757,410, but did
not arrest Schahanof in an effort to determine who she was working with.

One of the bags in the room was lined with carbon paper, which smugglers
believe shields currency from X-ray detectors, court papers said.

To the delight of agents, Schahanof stayed in the hotel room and used the
cell phone to discuss additional deliveries of cash. Glikas, however,
ordered her to return to Brazil.

When DEA agents interviewed her there, she said she made at least eight
trips to the United States in the past year to get drug money, staying two
days to two weeks, and typically getting $600,000 a day, the forfeiture
papers said.

Schahanof probably stayed at home in Brazil, which does not have an
extradition treaty with the United States, Senneca said.

Amaral's role was to bring bundles of checks and money orders into the
United States: nearly $91 million declared on 76 entries from January 1996
through April 1998, records show.

Glikas and Amaral were arrested at Kennedy Airport in April 1998. Amaral
later led investigators to accounts at New York banks where he had made
nearly $20 million in deposits that year, court papers said.

Amaral pleaded guilty Dec. 2, 1998, to not disclosing a felony and served a
seven-month term.

When the accounts were seized Jan. 13, 1999, they contained $8.2 million.

Glikas and Kern were convicted of money laundering conspiracy on March 19,
1999. They have appealed. Glikas, 46, is serving a 10-year term. Kern, 37,
of New York, got 65 months.

The $757,410 seized from Schahanof was forfeited to the government in September.