DRUG LORDS LAUNDERED MILLIONS THROUGH SOUTH FLORIDA, COURT RECORDS SHOW

Drug lords across South America laundered money through Mutual
Benefits Corp., investing millions of dollars with the company to buy
insurance policies that helped hide their illicit fortunes, court
records show.

Thousands of pages of court documents put Mutual Benefits at the
center of an elaborate network of money brokers and drug traffickers
who used the company to turn profits into legal, barely traceable
tender. At least tens of millions of dollars poured into the Fort
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company's accounts from Colombia, Latvia and elsewhere, in
transactions so massive and unusual that company executives should
have been suspicious, federal investigators said.

"This pattern of wire transfers and deposits from numerous, seemingly
unrelated third parties from all over the globe is consistent with
money laundering activities," Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Agent Catherina Ghorayeb wrote in support of an Aug. 17, 2005, civil
complaint seeking to recover $4 million that ICE said was laundered
through Mutual Benefits.

According to court filings and criminal indictments, narcotics
traffickers bought life insurance policies payable upon the deaths of
people with AIDS and other fatal diseases. Instead of waiting,
investors often cashed the policies out early, incurring substantial
penalties but winding up with "clean" money.

Federal officials have not charged employees of the now-closed Mutual
Benefits with taking part in these illicit transactions themselves,
but an ICE spokeswoman said last month her agency is still
investigating related money laundering allegations.

Curt Miner, an attorney appointed by a federal judge to oversee the
company's assets and track down money for investors, said he could not
comment on the money laundering allegations or any other criminal matters.

The revelations in court documents reviewed by the Sun Sentinel add
yet more intrigue to the downfall of Mutual Benefits and its wealthy,
politically connected leaders. Federal and state regulators shuttered
Mutual Benefits in 2004, a federal judge seized its assets and nine
employees have been convicted on a range of federal fraud charges.

And, in January, federal prosecutors charged Mutual Benefits' top two
executives, lead attorney and trustee with orchestrating an elaborate
Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of nearly $1 billion.

Joel Steigner, his brother, Steven Steiner, attorney Michael J.
McNerney and Anthony Livoti have all pleaded not guilty to an array of
fraud and money laundering charges "" charges unrelated to the drug
money investigation, but centered instead on how the company
transferred and spent investors' money.

Mutual Benefits has been under state and federal scrutiny for years
over allegations it faked life expectancy estimates of policy holders
and falsely promised investment returns as high as 72 percent. But its
interactions with Latin American drug traffickers and the complex
banking transactions had remained largely unreported until now.

Edward Shohat, Joel Steigner's attorney, said the company hired law
firms to monitor its anti-money laundering programs and went "the
extra mile to ensure compliance."

"The federal government has been investigating this for six years, and
the U.S. Attorney's Office even met with attorney for the company, but
they still have not brought charges," Shohat said. "There is no reason
to believe, as far as I know, that Mutual Benefits had any role in the
money laundering or knowledge of it."

The court records don't make clear whether Mutual Benefits was an
active participant in the money laundering or a pawn. ICE spokeswoman
Nicole Navas said she couldn't answer that question because the
investigation is ongoing but said there is only one reason investors
would be willing to invest millions only to pull out and absorb such
losses.

"It was done solely to hide the origin of the money. Yes, it should
have raised flags" with Mutual Benefits executives, Navas wrote in
response to questions from the Sun Sentinel.

Federal court records show drug syndicates sent money from banks in
Colombia, Latvia, Hong Kong and Mexico City and elsewhere to Fort
Lauderdale accounts controlled by Mutual Benefits. Federal
investigators uncovered the scheme in 2001 after members of the feared
Orijuela drug cartel began cooperating with investigators, and agents
spent years unraveling its many arms.

Customs Special Agent Deborah Keuthan Crane, in one affidavit asking a
judge to seize nearly $700,000 from Mutual Benefits accounts, said the
transactions were a cog in "an underground financial system in South
Florida."

According to court records, arrest reports, internal company memos and
e-mails included in the files:

One of the company's top independent South American sales agents,
Jamie Rey Albornoz, was charged in 2002 with laundering millions for
Rodrigo Jose Murillo. Colombian police raided Murillo's home and
seized $5 million in cash along with checks to him from Mutual
Benefits, federal investigators said in two forfeiture affidavits.

Murillo is serving a 21-year federal prison sentence after pleading
guilty to importing a 9,700-pound cocaine shipment into the United
States. Albornoz pleaded guilty to trafficking and is serving a
13-year prison sentence in Colombia.

The records show Albornoz was in frequent contact with Joel Steigner
at company headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, and proposed setting up
Mutual Benefits sales seminars in Cali and Medellin, centers of
Colombia's cocaine trade. At the same time he was working for the cartels.

In one e-mail to Steigner, Albornoz said he had recruited a group of
investors willing to buy policies from Mutual Benefits totaling $43
million, adding they would "urgently need" to cash in the policy
despite a 25 percent penalty. Shohat said the deal was never
completed, but the court records list the agent for that transaction
as Arturo Delgado, who in 2005 was sentenced to 13 years in federal
prison after pleading guilty to drug trafficking and laundering money.

"The investigation uncovered that employees of Mutual Benefits
regularly received wires and had telephonic contact with Arturo
Delgado, a main target and a money-laundering broker for the Colombian
narco-traffickers," Navas said.

The exact amount of money laundered through Mutual Benefits is not
easily discerned.

When Murillo, Albornoz and Delgado were arrested, federal
investigators said they laundered $80 million through insurance
companies, but did not say how much went through Mutual Benefits. The
company's own e-mails and other financial documents show Albornoz
orchestrated at least $55 million worth of transactions, and the Sun
Sentinel was able to independently verify $11 million.

Whatever the figure, Mutual Benefits coveted South America for its
wealth of investors, according to documents obtained by federal agents
during a 2002 raid on the company's Fort Lauderdale
headquarters.

Those seized records also show Albornoz complaining that Mutual
Benefits was having a hard time processing all the orders he brought
in.

"In 15 months of business we have placed some 1,000 orders worth
around US $25 million even though you have not made life easy for us,"
Albornoz wrote in 2001. "We must be doing something right."