Opinion ID: 76388
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Enrique Puche

Text: 28 The agents met with Enrique on July 7 and September 8, with Orlando present on both occasions. Enrique helped count more than $220,000 in cash brought in by the agents on those occasions. But it is not this mere existence of currency that incriminates Enrique. United States v. $506,231 in United States Currency, 125 F.3d 442, 452 (7th Cir.1997). During the September 8 meeting, Oliva joked with Orlando and Enrique about a news story that involved the discovery by law enforcement agents in Colombia of a submarine being outfitted to smuggle cocaine into the United States. Oliva remarked that he needed one of those submarines, and Enrique responded that a submarine could probably hold eighteen tons of cocaine. Shortly thereafter during the same visit, Oliva sought to engage Enrique in a conversation about conducting future wire transfers. Enrique referred the agents to Orlando and told them that he [Orlando] takes care of that. 29 Again, the jury could reasonably conclude that Enrique and his co-defendants knew and believed that the agents' money came from narcotics sales, or in the alternative, deliberately closed their eyes and ears to what they had every reason to believe was the reality. Just like Mauricio, Enrique never questioned the agents' need to move increasingly large amounts of cash in small bills outside the United States, the agents' identities despite Oliva's entreaties to use different names for multiple transactions, the letter from the IRS, and the agents' need to move money through GEC rather than through a bank. The jury could reasonably find that Enrique, despite having been present at just two of the agents' visits, learned of the agents' behavior and business on the other nine occasions (as well as the agents' contact with Serna-Osorio and Rojas) through the GEC's board meetings and his familial relationships with Orlando and Mauricio. Though Enrique attempts to dismiss the submarine conversation as part of a joke, the jury could have concluded that Enrique's remark, however in jest it may have been, was based on knowledge of Casamayor's drug trafficking.