EL PASO, Texas (AP) - A West Texas lawyer has been sentenced in El Paso to 20 years in federal prison for scheming to launder money for a Mexican drug cartel.
U.S. District Judge David Briones sentenced El Paso lawyer Marco Antonio Delgado on Friday. Delgado was found guilty in October of conspiring to launder up to $600 million for a now-defunct Milenio drug cartel between July 2007 and December 2008.
During the week-long trial, prosecutors showed how Delgado was arrested with $1 million in cash and how he later attempted to move money from Chicago to El Paso even after agreeing to cooperate with federal agents. Prosecutors presented recorded phone calls and emails showing that Delgado associated with people connected to drug cartels and how he discussed the movement of the money.
His attorneys claimed that associates of Lilian De La Concha, the ex-wife of Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox Quesada, had asked him to help move the funds, which Delgado said he thought were associated with an inheritance and construction companies, not illegal activity. Delgado and De La Concha were romantically involved during the time the scheme was in play. Fox had left office at the time of the conspiracy and was divorced from De La Concha.
Delgado faces another trial in March. A superseding indictment accuses him of conspiring to launder money he allegedly stole from a Mexican utility company.
Before his November 2012 arrest, Delgado was a member of the board of directors of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and had given a $250,000 endowment to create scholarship named after him. He also was a prominent El Paso philanthropist who donated to local charities.
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