Pubdate: Wed, 04 Oct 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Alan Feuer

OFFICER AND WIFE ACCUSED OF LAUNDERING CASH

A New York City police officer and his wife were arrested yesterday and 
charged with helping to launder more than $1 million in cash for Colombian 
drug lords, the authorities said.

The officer, Homero Zapata, and his wife, Liliana Lopez-Zapata, picked up 
duffel bags stuffed with cash, mostly in $20 bills, from drug dealers in 
the city, according to a complaint released in Federal District Court in 
Brooklyn. The couple then drove the money, in shipments of $100,000 to 
$300,000, to Miami, where they handed it over to representatives of a 
Colombian drug ring, according to the complaint.

Although the drug ring was not named, Victoria Ovis, the associate special 
agent in charge of the New York office of the United States Customs 
Service, said that it was a "large organization" and that Mr. Zapata, 36, 
and his wife, 31, who are both from Colombia, probably earned 2 percent to 
4 percent of whatever cash they delivered.

Ms. Ovis said the scheme had most likely been arranged by Ms. Lopez- 
Zapata. She said there was no evidence that Mr. Zapata had met the drug 
dealers while working as a police officer.

Mr. Zapata, an eight-year veteran of the police force, has been suspended 
from his job at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx.

Mr. Zapata was charged in the complaint with making at least six trips from 
New York to Miami from June 1997 to June 1999, always when he was off duty 
and often over a weekend. Each time, the court papers said, he rented a car 
- - frequently at La Guardia Airport - and flew back to New York, sometimes 
just in time to go on duty.

The scheme came to light in September 1997 when investigators of the New 
York Police Department received a tip and were on hand to watch the Zapatas 
pick up $100,000 in cash from a drug trafficker, identified in court papers 
as Fernando Henao. Over the next several months, the court papers said, the 
investigators observed the couple making numerous other pickups and deliveries.

In June 1999, the couple was stopped for speeding on Interstate 95 by the 
police in South Carolina. Officers searched their car and discovered a 
duffel bag filled with about $200,000 in cash. Mr. Zapata appeared nervous, 
the complaint said, trembling and stuttering as he spoke. Under 
questioning, Mr. Zapata said that the money was his own and that he was 
driving south to visit his mother-in-law, according to the complaint.

But the couple was not arrested until yesterday morning because, Ms. Ovis 
said, there was "a lot more information to be gathered." She said the 
Customs Service began working with the New York City police earlier this 
year after Mr. Zapata's name turned up in its own investigation of 
laundered drug money.

Mr. Zapata and Ms. Lopez-Zapata were detained yesterday in lieu of bail. 
They face a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
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