22 Million hidden at home
Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez faces charges on money laundering and marijuana after Miami-Dade police found $22 million stuffed in buckets inside his Miami Lakes home last June. His lawyers, Philip Reizenstein and Frank Gaviria, offered the strategy of their defense this week at a hearing. The trial for the defendant is scheduled for November.
Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez, a Miami Lakes man who stuck $ 22 million in cash in his house- suspected to be obtained from the sale of marijuana –and who used orange buckets to hide the cash, pleaded guilty last Wednesday, but will not lose all of his money at the hands of the federals. Hernández González, 46, agreed to let the government keep $ 18 million, while he could keep around $ 4 million, as well as his house, his business, and five Rolex watches. No doubt, he knows how to make business! Hernandez Gonzalez pleaded guilty in a federal court to money laundering and making bank deposits to avoid reporting the actual amounts to the government. Judge Robert Scola will sentence Hernández González on April 20th.
He is expected to face a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, but his defense lawyers said they expect him to receive a less severe sentence, which could be five years behind bars. Lawyers for the defendant offered their defense in court as a Miami-Dade judge on Tuesday lowered his bond to $2 million. However, he remains jailed. “The prosecution of our client amounts to what we think is a war on marijuana and a war on legitimately earned cash,” defense lawyer Philip Reizenstein said after Tuesday’s hearing.
Hernandez Gonzalez grabbed headlines across the country when detectives raided his Miami Lakes home in June 2016 and discovered almost all the money in 24 Home Depot buckets, which were hidden in a secret compartment above a closet. Another $ 600,000 were found at his business facility. The first reports of the case were known by the Miami Herald. Hernández González is a well-known figure in the marijuana-sale business. He owns the Blossom Experience store, a North Miami-Dade store that sells fans, lights, fertilizers and other indoor gardening equipment. The police think that although it is legal, the business facilitates and serves marijuana traffickers who harvest the herb in clandestine laboratories at their homes.
The Miami Herald reports that Miami-Dade police dragged away the money in a pickup truck, with narcotics detectives spending more than a day exhaustively counting the money. The department also released striking photos of the money hidden in the room — and the huge pile of cash once the bills were removed from the buckets. Money laundering and marijuana trafficking is a very common problem in the State, where cases keep on piling as does the cash gathered from every single person involved in those crimes.